


Abomination

by Femalefonzie



Series: The Family That Slays Together [2]
Category: Angel: the Series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Lost Boys (1987)
Genre: Angel Season Five, Angel is the world's most awkward father, David is a little shit, Dysfunctional Family, F/F, F/M, Family Secrets, Ghost Spike, Implied Mpreg, M/M, Meet the Family, Multi, Spike hovers, Vampire Sex
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-01-25
Updated: 2016-05-01
Packaged: 2018-05-16 03:11:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 26,203
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5811430
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Femalefonzie/pseuds/Femalefonzie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set after Angel s502. The events of Lost boys happened a few days before. </p><p>After the Frog brothers and the Emersons killed Max, David and his brothers find themselves on their own and in need of protection. This leaves David with no choice but to try and reconnect with his biological parents who just happen to be two of the most feared vampires of all time; Angelus and William The Bloody. </p><p>Alternatively; What Happened In Saint Petersburg. </p><p>Or; David brings his friends to Wolfram and Hart to meet mommy and daddy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Arrival In LA Part 1

Something was moving. David had his eyes shut tight, waiting for himself to turn to ash, but he could still hear movement around the room. Someone was moving. He sniffed the air, checking to see if it was one of the humans come back to gloat. It didn't smell human. It smelled sweeter, like a rich and creamy vanilla. He knew that smell but it was impossible...

The person moved upstairs, and David could have sworn he had heard voices and a pop like someone hit burst open a balloon. Then more movement. This time, two sets of footsteps came downstairs and moved towards another room. The scent of vanilla was now joined by a thick, musky odor. It smelled like grass, like a freshly cut lawn, but David knew better. It smelled like pot.

There was a loud sound in the other room, something was tossed aside and there was a shattering sound, followed by a groan. Another smell joined the two, this one nearly nauseating. It was a thick, wretched smell of so much alcohol David was getting contact drunk from being around it.

Three pairs of footsteps now, slowly walking over to him. And then a small, boney hand slapped David across the face.

"Get up you drama queen," An unmistakable voice said. "It missed your heart. You'll be fine."

David opened his eyes. Marko was standing beside him, tired, and weaker looking but still standing. He must have begun healing after the other had left. He looked so dead...and he kept screaming...they all just assumed that when the screaming stopped he had...

Paul looked nearly acidic. Parts of his skin appeared to be melting off, and scarring over. Some chunks of his flesh fell off him, exposing chunks of pink flesh. His hair was soaking wet, and smelled like cheap Italian food. His eyes were rubbed red, and he brought his elbow up to rub some more. "I think I got a clove of garlic in my eye..."

Dwayne was completely charred black. Like Paul, some chunks of flesh were pealing off and exposing the tender flesh under neath. His hair stood on end, like an Albert Einstein haircut, and was completely fried. At the touch, it crumbled and fell away. "I always heard people saying TV was harmful but that was ridiculous..."

By those standards, David had gotten off easy. There was still an issue at hand though. "Guys I'm pinned to the wall. Help."

It took them a couple minutes to get David down from the mantel. Paul took the opportunity to crack a joke about him being some Hunter's trophy, and Dwayne added by saying that Michael's grandfather would have definitely stuffed and displayed him if he could. If they hadn't all almost died, David probably would have hit them both. Nearly dying made him generous.

Once he was down, Marko surveyed the wreck of the house. "They killed Max." He stated, "...So who's in charge now?"

David looked between his three friends. They weren't born vampires, they were created. By him, by Max, and they had spent their years living as vampires under the stern gaze of a site. They didn't know how to exist otherwise. And for that matter...neither did David. He'd always had an authority figure, keeping him from being too reckless, but he was on his own now. Yes he had his brothers but there was no one telling them what to do.

"I don't know," He replied, and stuffed his hands into the pockets of his jacket. "We'll worry about that later. News of what happened will get out, those damn Frogs will go and tell all their Hunter buddies, and we'll loose territory by Tuesday morning."

Other vampires had been trying to move in on Santa Carla for years. It was a prime location. Fun Boardwalk, incompetent police forces, tons of bodies walking around like cheeseburgers with legs, lack of other demonic or supernatural presences, it was an ideal location. Word of mouth travelled fast and soon someone would come knocking on their front doors.

"I think we should leave." Marko said.

"Yeah," David said in agreement. "They'll be along to check and get rid of the bodies soon-"

"No," Marko corrected him. "I think we should leave Santa Carla. I think that...we've been here for too long. There has to be another city we can go to...at least until the Frogs die off-"

"No." David said firmly.

Paul perked up, "We could go to Mexico! I always wanted to go to-"

"No." David told him.

"What about New York? I think I still have family in New York City-" Dwayne begun to suggest.

"No." David insisted.

"Well what about Los Angeles?" Marko suggested.

"ABSOLUTELY NOT!" David bellowed, "GUYS, WE ARE STAYING HERE. THIS IS OUR HOME, WE HAVE BEEN HERE FOR DECADES, AND THERE IS NOTHING THAT ANYONE CAN SAY OR DO TO MAKE US LEAVE."

There were voices outside. Faint but hit loud enough for the four vampires to hear. The damn Frogs were back, and bringing others along in tow.

"-gotta cut off the heads.-"

"-burn down their liars-"

"-make sure that they stay dead-"

"-destroy every vampire in this city-"

David paled, it had taken them less time to regroup than he had originally hoped. In a matter of hours, Santa Carla had become the vampire hunter capital of the world. Marko flashed him a desperate look. "David we have no choice..."

They had to get out of here. They had to find a city where they could be safe, where someone would be able to guide them....and there was only one...

David turned and started creeping back towards the back door. "Hell A. Here we come..."

* * *

They traveled at night, carrying what they couldn't bare to part with in backpacks. They fed off the homeless, prostitutes and hitchhikers, as they traveled the back roads of California. David was quiet the entire time, both out of unwillingness to reveal where they were headed and trying to get a lock on a particular scent; something sweet and citrusy; peaches.

The city reeked of it. Every alley, every major street, all smelled of him. It wasn't long until David found a recently used trail and followed it back to the source. He lead his brothers to a building in the deeper part of the city, a building with a steady stream of traffic despite being night.

"David?"

"Yes Dwayne?"

"This is a law office..."

Wolfram and Heart's LA branch stood before them in all its glory. David had heard of it before, but never imagined he would be working there. It was completely against everything he stood for now. But the trail lead them here, and lead them inside. Help was inside...assuming they would receive it.

"I know," David replied simply. "Park the bikes around back in the parking lot and follow me inside."

* * *

The doors opened up for them with a ding, and David got a strong feeling of wrongness. This was not how demons were supposed to live. The interior was so...bright and colorful it made him want to throw up.

And then he saw what could only be described as the vampiric version of Malibu Barbie sitting behind the main desk and jotting things down on a notepad. He felt the blood rush from his head, but before he could take one step, the boys were at her side.

"Evening beautiful-"

"I'm Marko-"

"What lovely eyes you have ma'am-"

The woman seemed a bit overwhelmed at first, caught off guard by three incredibly quick footed vampires, but regained her stance quickly. She smiled, her eyes fluttered, and she gave them a playful wave and a soft insincere plea to stop. David rolled his eyes and sauntered over to the desk.

"Ignore them," he told her. "We need to speak with-"

"Spike?" The woman asked, cocking an eyebrow. "You look...solid again."

Three sets of vampire eyes switched from the blonde with big tits to the blonde with a completely flat chest and more muscles than the bay of fundy. Marko mouthed, "Spike?" In confusion.

David shook his head, "No. I'm not...Spike." It felt weird calling him that. Decades later, and it would always feel weird. "My friends and I have to see Angel immediately. If he in?"

"Do you have an appointment?" The woman inquired. "Sorry but with all that's been going on we can't let you in unless you have an appointment scheduled."

A cruel, fanged smirk grew on David's face. "Oh, he'll make time for me. Tell him that Laddie is here to see him."

* * *

It had been a long day. Angel was tired, Angel was sore, and he didn't want to even think about anything related to death or raising the dead for another 24 hours at the least. Spike was still floating around the building somewhere, a concern of Angel's but not for the moment. He just wanted to finish up with Fred, Wesley and Gunn, and go to bed.

They were speaking, of course, about Spike. You couldn't just show up in a necklace, and haunt their place of work without having a serious discussion about it. Wesley was still spouting off information about William the Bloody, Fred was trying to piece together an argument about him having a soul, and Gunn was speaking so much lawyer gibberish that Angel couldn't understand him anymore. He missed the times where he actually understood these people but the days when that happened were long past.

There was a knock at the door and Harmony poked her head in, not waiting for an answer. "Bossy?"

Angel sighed and rubbed his forehead. "What now Harmony?"

"There's a group of boys here up see you....a couple look s bit like chip n' dale's dancers...should I send them away?"

Angel rolled his eyes, "No. We want the office full of strippers. Of course send them away! Tell them to come back later!"

Harmony turned to leave, realized something important, and turned back. "Oh yeah! I forgot to mention! One looks like Spike, which is weird, and said to say that Laddie was here to see you or something like that...-"

Laddie...

_LADDIE!_

Angel bolted out of his seat, ran towards the door, nearly knocked Harmony onto her ass, and sprinted into the lobby. Sure enough, standing there was the one person Angel never imagined he would see again, and wasn't sure if he ever wanted to see again.

"David." He said, his voice cracking pathetically on the word. It was almost taboo for him to say it.

The younger vampire straightened up, trying to appear larger in front of his elder. It was a survival tactic bears and vampires used often. He forced a mischievous grin, "Hello daddy, long time no see?"


	2. Arrival In LA Part 2

The last time Angel had seen David, he was storming out of one of the homes the Whirlwind had occupied in their many years circulating through Europe. It had been in the Ukraine, actually, not far from where David had been born. He had been in an inconsolable rage, spouting insults at anyone who dares cross his path. William, Darla, even a throughly confused Drusilla. None had seen the younger male so angry before and any attempt to calm him down was a failure. He left them that night night, swearing to establish himself in the Americas. None had heard from him since. The last time Angel attempted to bring David up in a conversation with Spike, he had received a cryptic answer of Spike's suspicions that the other was deceased. Until now David had done nothing to show them he was still alive. 

He looked so much like Spike...They could have passed for twins if it weren't for David's nose. He had Angel's nose and cheekbones, and that was about it. The rest was pure Spike.

Three other vampires, turned and not born, surrounded David. Each looked completely lost. Occasionally they looked from David, to Angel, and back to David. There was something happening here they just couldn't wrap their minds around. David's daddy comment didn't help. 

"David..." Angel mumbled, and looked the younger vampire over. "You look...well."

"Not too bad considering I was poked with a pair of antlers a couple days ago, huh?" David replied with a cheeky grin. 

"Poke with a pair of-" Angel would never understand this boy. "Never mind. I haven't heard from you in...what? 120 years give or take..."

"123 I think." David replied, unsure of how exact his math was. "Not since Belarus right? Yeah...time got a way from me..."

David didn't have a soul. David was evil. David was raised by Whirlwind. David was a threat. David had to leave. Angel was willing to do whatever it took to make him go and never come back. Before someone got too close or started asking too many questions.

"So...who is this again?" Fred asked. An innocent question with an unsettling answer.

David looked her over, in a way that was just plain unsettling, and grinned. He had always been more tolerant towards humans...at least when he wasn't eating or torturing them for some attention from Dad. "Oh, he didn't tell you?" He asked, pointing at Angel. "I'm his son. I'm David, but if there's any record of me in your books and scrolls, you can find me under Laddie."

Angel sighed and rubbed his forehea. Yeah, this is just what he needed...

"Son...?!" Gunn repeated in astonishment. "How can you have a son?! You're a vampire, you're dead..."

"And why didn't you mention this sooner!?" Fred asked, "A son...that seems like something that you should have mentioned."

Wesley was silent. He was going over every recording of Angelus' activities in his head, searching for any mention of a David or a Laddie. He faintly recalled a mentioning of a child traveling with Whirlwind back in the late 1880s but there was no mention of one following 1892. This David...it was possible that he was said child but what happened to cause him to leave all of a sudden....of him aging...

"Long story short don't piss of any witch covens during their worship of fertility goddesses and gods. They have a weird sense of irony." David said simply. "Things get weird." 

Angel sighed and rubbed his forehead. David had always been especially skilled at giving him headaches, second only to-

Spike reappeared after his latest ghostly disappearance at the top of the stairs. He seemed unamused by the whole thing, but not so much that he wouldn't spend the rest of the day moping around. No, he would find someone to annoy...most likely his grand sire. David smelled him before Spike had a chance to even notice that there were new people in the building. He knew that scent anywhere, the unmistakable odor of alcohol, cigarettes, soap and books clashing in one of the most unique scents known to man. David looked back over his shoulder, and any more snarky comments he had about the situation died in his throat. 

It took Spike until he reached the bottom of the stairs to catch whiff of a scent he hadn't caught since he terrorized Belarus with Angelus in 1892. He locked eyes with David, and realized he had forgotten that the boy and him had the same eyes. 113 years and he had forgotten things he swore he would cling to.

"David...?" He had to ask, not believing much of what his eyes showed him to be true anymore. He had felt David was in pain but had believed that he passed on back in the earthquakes that plagued California in the '20s. He would have searched for him if things hadn't ended so horribly.

The younger vampire felt a pang of guilt, seeing Spike there. After hearing about his father getting a soul, and then this nonsense about Spike separating from Drusilla and getting one of his own, he had decided it best not to poke his head in this chaos. That and he had been tediously cruel the last time he had spoken with him. 

Times had changed, however. 

He sauntered over to the staircase, and attempted to throw his arms around Spike's shoulders and pull him in for a somewhat awkward man hug. Plans backfired when his arms went completely through Spike, and he nearly fell flat on his face. 

"What the hell...?"

"Oh yeah, probably should have opened with that. I'm kinda dead-er than usual." It was growing boring to explain the whole Helmouth-amulet-soul-death thing almost daily to at least five different people. "Fred over there's going to have me solid again real soon though." 

David looked back at the group of humans that followed his father out and the girl waved. Ah, that one was the Fred. He was going to have to remember not to eat her. She was helping Spike. 

"Yeah, I heard something about that...sorry I couldn't have taken my boys over, helped in some way."

Spike managed a smile. "Wouldn't have done much but get yourselves staked. Not to mention-" 

"We don't have souls?" David supplied. "Human tolerance taken into account?" They are humans but it wasn't like they couldn't control themselves. If asked to, they would happily let those three buggers hanging around his dad live. Hell, they'd take them out to dinner and dancing, even have sex if that was what the situation called for. 

"Weren't exactly tolerant when you were slaughtering that village in Germany with us, were you?" 

"Key word is with you. I remember you disembowling a couple of nuns with dad." David pointed out, "And tossing around a couple of little babies like they were bouncy balls." 

Spike huffed, and memories of that night came flooding back. He remembered that night well. They had burned the village to the ground after ripping apart every man, woman and child who called the place home. He would rather not focus on that now. He looked past David, at the three goons he had dragged in with him. One of them, a blonde with big, puffy hair and leather jacket, was fascinated by a plant Harmony had growing on her desk. Not exactly geniuses here were they?

"Who are they?" 

"Marko, Paul and Dwayne. I've been traveling around with them for the past...well the past. Since they're all that's left of the group I had set up in Santa Carla I brought them along with me here." More or less. He could feel Marko's glare on the back of his neck. 

Angel folded his arms stubbornly in front of his chest, and did his best not to lash out and stake the three morons his son had dragged into his office. He knew that David had come here for a reason. He never did anything like this without a purpose. He acted so recklessly, and then expected his parents to clean up after him. It happened in Wales back in 1889, and it was happening in L.A. in 2005. 

"What happened?" He asked, "Why are you here?" 

David spun around, and placed his hand over his heart, pretending to be hurt. "Oh how you wound me. You think I came all the way here just for your help with something?" 

"Yes." Angel said with a nod.

"Oh yea." Spike added, actually agreeing with Angel for once.

Paul looked up from his very interesting plant, and flashed his brother a confused look. "Isn't that why we came here?" 

David rolled his eyes. He shouldn't have turned Paul when the vampire was high off several different kinds of pot. It seemed to have a lasting affect on the vampire. That was what you got when you picked your brothers out of the crowd at s Rolling Stones concert. 

"Okay, so I may or may not need your help housing me and the boys for a bit, until all the fuss dies down in Santa Carla or we can settle somewhere new." David confessed, "Pissed off a couple vampire hunters and now they're out for our heads. We go back there and we're good as dead. Got no where else to go." He was throwing himself at the mercy of his father. He was evil, his brothers were evil, but he was his son. He just hoped that was enough to save him. 

"David-" Before Angel could finish he felt Spike glaring at him. His eyes flashed gold, a warning of what would happen if Angel denied the boy safe haven. He couldn't offer much by means of torment at the moment, given that he was incorporeal but as soon as he figured out how to pick things up, he'd go all poltergeist on his ass. He would annoy him beyond belief, until Angel finally ran into the sun. Angel sighed again, knowing that Spike always had a soft spot when it came to David. 

"I...alright. You can stay, you and your crew of...of whatever you like to yourselves, but there are strict rules here. You brake any of them and I will not hesitate to kill you. Any of you." Angel's eyes lingered on his son when he said the last part, making sure that he knew that he would kill him. It would be another death on his conscious, another reason he would never forgive what he had done as Angelus, but he would do it. Like it or not David was evil, and it was inevitable that he would succumb to his own cruelty. Whether he tried to avoid it or not. 

David managed a bitter laugh. "Just like when we were traveling with Mum and the aunties, huh?" 

Gunn frowned, catching onto something that his friend's son had said. Mum and the aunties, which implied that Angelus was traveling with three women and not Darla, Drusilla and Spike as documented. "I'm sorry but who is your mother, exactly? Darla, Drusilla?" 

Instead of giving a complicated, and sarcastic answer, David just pointed at the other blonde vampire currently occupying the stairs and answered, "Spike."

"...Spike?" Gunn repeated. 

"Spike." Angel confirmed with a slight nod. 

"Spike." Said vampire mumbled. "William the Bloody, to be exact." 

There was shocked murmuring from team Angel, and even David's lost boys looked about in confusion. David could only laugh. "What?" He asked, "I told you them witches get weird when you piss 'em off."

 


	3. Arrival In LA Part 3

_Saint Petersburg, 1882_

The infant had been crying since it entered the world two days ago. Angelus was at his wits end. Darla had left days ago, returning to the witches' cabin in Siberia to drag back one of them to explain how to shut the horrid thing up, and Drusilla had left shortly after the creature's birth. She had held his hand, while whispering sweet nothings blind assurances into her childe's ear, and flew the coop immediately after the beat started screaming and whining. William was left bedridden, weak and in need of someone to hunt and bring back good for him and the tiny being he had swaddled in light blue blankets. Angelus left for a couple hours every night, and returned home with fresh kills. Will would eat, and try and offer some to the creature, but it would cry and whine and wouldn't stop until Will finally gave up and brought it to his neck to feed.

If Darla hadn't sworn that the infant would of use, he would have terminated the little beast the day the members of Whirlwind discovered what it was. 

He sat alone in the parlor of the house, legs kicked up on the coffee table, and trying to find his muse for a new sketch. The creature was with William in the master bedroom, where they had been since arriving in the damn city. Darla had taken control of the situation quickly, finding the nearest house that was up to their standards and demanding an invitation. 

"My brother is ill!" She pleaded, banging both fists on the wooden door. "Please, we need assistance!"

A woman answered the door, dressed in fine fur and a beautifully seen dress made of silk. She ushered the four inside, closed the door behind Angelus' and Darla promptly snapped her neck. Drusilla and Angelus were ordered to search the house for any other members of the family while Darla helped get William settled. There had a daughter upstairs, and a man fast asleep in his bed. Angelus enjoyed the kill, and made himself familiar with a liquor cabinet downstairs in the dining room. Darla ordered him into the room with Will and her shortly after he finished off the good vodka, and started barking orders. She appeared to be in the early stages of panic. William had taken control of the situation from there,

He thrust one arm out towards his grandsire. "Just shut up and hold my hand." He told him, and for once, Angelus didn't quite feel like scolding the youngest member of their family for his insolence. 

The twerp was born that very night. 

As he sat there waiting for his sore or his muse, whichever happened to come to him first, Angelus heard something odd. Will had been quiet in the days after the little monster had been born. The whole experience had left him incredibly vulnerable and unwilling to leave the home, or even properly communicate with the other members of his family. But in the quietness of the home, as a cold Russian wind blew outside and snow began to fall, Angelus could hear William. His voice was soft, and sounded more like Will when he had been new to the Whirlwind two years ago. Angelus rose from his seat, and slowly began approaching the master bedroom. He didn't bother to knock, Will would be able to smell him coming, and pushed open the door with a soft creak. 

The whines of the infant were slowly dying down in volume, as Will rocked it carefully in his arms. The Englishman had been unable to dress since they took control of the house, but had a patchwork quilt pulled up to his waist. His torso was covered in tiny bite marks from where the little brat had fed. Will didn't look over towards the older vampire. His gaze was focused solely on the infant, and it was something Angelus hadn't seen in years. It was tender, loving and pure. Angelus was so repulsed, he may have thrown up if only he could sneak away to do such without being noticed. 

"-Early on morning, just as the sun was rising, I heard...-" 

Singing. Will was singing. William the bloody was singing an old English folk song to his newborn child as he lay bedridden in Russia with an emotionally constipated grandsire. A wave of nausea passed over Angelus again, and he had to lean against the doorframe to remain upright. He had never noticed before but William had a lovely singing voice...pity he hadn't been interest in music instead of his poetry. Though truthfully the old Irishman was fond of Will's work in that field as well. Once they dealt with the beast, Angelus just may ask the childe to sing more.In the early hours of the morning, perhaps, when they were drifting off to sleep. Lullabies seemed to be Will's specialty. 

The infant stopped crying, stopped whining, and for the first time since its birth, was silent. Will stopped his little song, and pressed a kiss to the top of it's head, before looking towards the door. 

"I see you there Angelus," he stated with an eyeroll. "You know you're more than welcome to enter and not linger. You have a right to see the child." 

He had rights, being the creature's father and all. 

The scourge of Europe shuffled into the room, hands in the pockets of his trousers, and eyes directed at the floor. He sat down at the end of the bed, avoiding all possible eye contact. He inhaled deeply, before asking, "The...child is well then?"

William nodded. "He is well. There was some trouble falling asleep last night, and being new to the world he is naturally confused. The days to come will be better. For all of us." 

Darla had a plan. Angelus had to put faith in his sire. There had to be a method to get madness, a result she wished to seek. Things would work out if he simply followed his side's wishes. 

"I assume you know how I feel about all of this." He said, choosing not to beat around the bush with William for the duration of the brat's life. 

"I know," Will replied. "And you know that until two days ago, I felt the same?"

"That I do lad, that I do." Darla had been the only ones who could see the benefit to having this...abomination around. "Why I don't understand is why you're suddenly on the opposing side. Why suddenly you're cooing over this little thing like a dotty, clueless woman. I expected more from you, dear William."

The younger of the two fell silent, and avoided an answer for a moment or so to tend to the child currently under discussion. "It's...hard to explain," William started to say, trying to keep his words and ideals straight. "Something happens when I hold him. He isn't a normal baby, Angelus, he's a vampire. A born vampire. He has no soul, no purity, and he may just be the only creature in existence actually born evil. Though not now. Now he is so young and fragile, but he will age, and he will be stronger than any of us, and he will have so much power that the world, the heavens and he'll will cease at his command." 

"That may be so but at the moment he is of no use to us." Angelus said simply. "A baby cannot terrorize Europe."

Will snorted, and rolled his eyes. He leaned forward, and without warning placed the infant in the older vampire's arms. Angelus let out a surprised hiss, but held the child and prevented him from falling out of his lap. " _Will_!" He snapped, and bit down hard on his lower lip. He didn't want to wake the brat, and spend the next week listening to the creature crying. 

But the baby didn't cry, didn't even wake. He stirred in Angelus' arms, and nestled close to Angelus' chest and yawned. Will laughed, "Look he's already used to your yelling!"

Angelus didn't say anything. He found himself unable to take his eyes off the child. Two days old, and so small in his father's arms. There were already faint whisps of blond hair on his little head, and he had Angelus' nose and cheekbones. He was going to be handsome, a lady killer, just like his old man...and a regular killer. 

"I understand what you were saying." Angelus mumbled, "He...it's hard to feel negative about him when he's here like this." He was going to raise him to be skilled in torture, in arsen and mayhem. After all, they were father and son, and the last thing Angelus wanted was to be like his own father. "...You named him, did you not?"

"I was waiting for you to come around." William confessed. 

"Sentimental fool," Angelus teased. "He needs something to go by. Can't spend an eternity calling him a twerp now, can we boyo?"

"I had an idea," Will piped up. "David...after my father. He died before I was born." 

David...

"Well it's not the worst name for a child I've ever heard," Angelus said with a shrug. "And I reckon it's only fair you give the lad his first name. You getting the raw end of the whole deal and all."

"And his middle name? What say you there?"

Unlike William, Angelus would rather die than slap the name of his father on his son, or any name relating to his days as a human drunk. No Liams, or any of the sort. The only name he managed to think of that did not repulse him was one with only a loose tie to the better part of his human life. 

"Christopher." A male version of Katherine. "His full name is David Christopher." 

They could argue until the sun rose over whether or not his surname should be that of William (Pratt), Angelus' (O'Connor) or whether he should identify with the clan name as his last name. None of that really mattered, however. Being dead and all, they could simply wait until David was old enough to select a surname for himself. 

Immortality was a beautiful thing. 


	4. Arrival In LA Part 4

"So..." Paul drawed out, checking the room quickly to ensure that Angel, Spike and their allies were entirely gone. They had ushered them into a nearby conference room seconds after David's confirmation of both Angelus and William as his parents, and we're currently arguing just outside the door. Dwayne was half-assedly trying to eavesdrop, but it proved problematic. Wolfram and Hart did well to ensure their offices were as soundproof as humanly possible. Which also had a profound affect on vampires. "Your mom is a dude."

A dude who had been causing trouble and disorder world wide for decades. A dude who destroyed hundreds of thousands of lives. A dude who had gone through the demon trials and had become ensouled. A dude who had given his life to save the world in Sunnydale. A dude who quite easily could kick their asses and send them flinging back to hell.

David leaned across the table, until his face was just inches away from Paul's, and cocked an eyebrow. "Yes? And what's wrong with that there Paulie?"

Paul pushed back quickly and nearly flipped backwards off his chair. "Oh nothing man! I was just saying....I mean this is a nice place...the people are...are nice enough....and yeah..." There wasn't anything he, Marko or Dwayne could say that wouldn't result in their ring leader kicking the shit out of them. They were treading on thin ice here.

Dwayne had his legs kicked up on the table, and was beginning to doze off while they waited to be told what to do next. Marko was scratching things into the surface, little skulls and crossbones, and only half listening to David and Paul. At this point he had become bored with them both.

"It is nice Paul, and nice isn't good, remember?" David shuddered, the place's good vibrations beginning to settle around them. "We're evil. We're cruel. We're wicked. Until the Frogs are finally killed we just have to play nice." They could do that. They could make all chummy with his father's human buddies, they could run around this damn office doing what they could to help out, but once they got the clear, they were gone. They would ride back home, and live like gods in the caverns beneath the city.

This caught Marko's ear, and without looking up from his latest etching of a flaming sword, said. "You didn't want to come here David. Why? Someone have some daddy issues that need resolving?"

The older of the two growled but remained seated. Getting into a fight and tossing Marko out the window to his death wouldn't help their "good boy" images. Instead, David folded his hands together calmly and replied, "My father is Angelus. Angel is a hallow shell of him. Angel is not my father."

"And Spike?"

"Spike..." His voice cracked unwillingly, and David fake-coughed to avoid suspicion of having any feelings towards his other parent. "...got in the way. Nothing more, nothing less."

That sounded as fake as it felt. Marko rolled his eyes, and did another sweep of the conference room. It was a lot more elegant than the housing he had been accustom to, even before he had turned. It smelled nice harm, gave him a warm, pleasant feeling in his chest. Regardless of whatever David said, Marko was starting to grow a desire to stay here. Angel had a vampire secretary, young and blonde, around the age he was when he turned, perhaps one of his companions needed assistance. The Fred girl seemed charming enough...

"...so...." Paul drawed out again, looking from Marko to David, and ignoring a now fully asleep Dwayne. "...You guys want to talk about the hotties in the lobby? Lot of prim bodies around this place. And David, sorry man, but your parents are totally Dilfs."

This time David did punch Paul. Right across the face, sending him flying backwards in his chair.

* * *

"Understand this, Angel, you will not let David just walk right out of here and into the hands of those Hunters!" Spike hissed, staring directly into the eyes of his grandsire. Angel had remained stoic since the younger vampire started barking at him, but struggled to keep up this demeanor. For the sake of the situation getting out of control, he had to stay calm. Spike was jus trying to stir the pot. "They will kill him. He means nothing to them, just another vampire-"

"He is just another vampire-"

Spike slapped Angel across the face, though instead of a painful impact, his hand just blew right through Angel's cheek. "He's your son you git! Our son! He has to mean something to you, or since Angelus was too fond of him-"

"This is not about me Spike! He's a killer-"

"And who made him that?! Both of us! You, and me, and Darla and Drusilla! We made him this way! We have to be the ones who help him!" Spike had to stop speaking, his voice was growing hoarse and beginning to ache from screaming so loudly. "Look, he's done so much bad...but he's still your son, my son, and he needs us. You let him go, and he's going to do more of it. He's going to die a monster..."

If there was any hope of David being salvaged, it was working with his father and living here, at least until further notice. It possible for vampires without souls to be helpful; Harmony was doing fairly well at being normal, though neutered Spike had certainly improved during the time before he had been ensouled, and a few other new-age vampires were hopping onboard the no-lethal lifestyle. David wasn't like them, as William had said to Angelus over a century ago, David was the only creature on earth ever born evil. He could not be saved.

"Spike I already said he and his friends can stay here. We just...have to keep an eye on all four of them," Harmony was under his watch almost 24 hours a day, doing menial tasks of fetching blood, doing paperwork and scheduling appointments. He could keep David and his friends busy fetching coffee and laying under the radar. "I have rules they have to listen to. A long list of them. First one to brake any of them gets a stake through the brain."

Wesley chuckled to himself, rocking back and forth on his heels. "I think a stake through the head of that taller blonde one, the one who looked like the lead singer of Twisted Sister, would be an act of mercy."

Fred and Gunn snickered, while Angel and Spike both just rolled their eyes. Humans could be so simple...it was insulting really.

"Well he's going to end up being one of your assistants, so someone here better learn to work with...with his issues." Angel told them, and started to head back to the conference room to round these boys up and strike the fear of Angelus into them. He knew immediately that Spike was following him, even without the sound of footsteps. After 18 years of companionship he could sense whenever captain peroxide was nearby. He looked back over his shoulder quickly, and sure enough there the younger vampire was. He raised an eyebrow, and in turn looked back himself.

"What's up captain forehead?" He asked, "See some oogie-boogie causing mischief while the big bossy is turned around?"

Angel had this to look forward to, every god damn day for eternity. Worse yet, it Spike's presence around him was going to amplify now that David had arrived. Some people just couldn't catch a break in the world...

He pushed the doors to the conference room open and they hit the walls with a slam. David had Paul up by the collar of leather jacket, vamped out and spitting slurs, while Dwayne slept peacefully unaware of the racket and Marko laughed and cheered them on, banging his fists on the table which had received a variety of new carvings etched into its surface. They were behaving like spoiled children. To catch their attention, Angel slammed Dwayne's head against the table. The younger vampire hissed, and rubbed at his nose, checking for dents and broken bones.

"Hey-"

It worked. David let go off Paul, who toppled to the ground and quickly scrambled back to his feet. Marko looked back at Angel, and grinned innocently. He wasn't doing anything seriously bad, just sitting here, doing little sketches. Marko was a little angel. Paul and David sat back down and tried to recover from being caught in an argument.

Angel locked eyes with his son, who pushed far back in his chair. "Do I even want to know?" He asked, and David shook his head. At least the b it was being honest with him. "I spoke with my people and there should I be no problems in letting you stay here."

Tiptoeing around the old man was going to be difficult but David could manage. This place was a step up from the caves they slept in, and Max's house. Penthouses, Windows that blocked the sun, pretty, pretty secretaries bringing them blood...a man could get used to this lifestyle.

Seeing a greedy look spreading in David's baby blue eyes, Angel took action. He went and sat down at the end of the table, attempting to treat these four like employees, not punks. Which they soon would be.

"There are three positions available in the company. Gunn, Wesley and Fred need assistances to help sort through the forms they have piling up here. Paul, Dwayne and Marko, pick one of them and get to work-"

Dwayne, still feeling his poor schnoz for cracks, scowled. "Now hang on, we didn't agree to-"

"The only room and board available here is for employees with housing concerns and the occasional werewolf. You want a room, you get a clipboard, you get to work." Speaking of which, Harmony entered the room, and started handing out residence forms to the group. Dwayne managed a tiny smile as she moved around, leaned leaned over the table beside him. Her shirt was cut so low, he could see the round, supple breasts, threatening to pop right out of the tight material. He could work with her. "Rooms are on the second floor from the top, numbered, you should be able to find your way around."

Paul took his form from Harmony and all of the color drained from his face. There were a lot of words on this thing, and something told him none were the lyrics to Boheimin Rhapsody.

"You know, when I agreed to be a vampire I didn't think I would be spending my time filling out forms and running around for some watcher's council reject." Dwayne mumbled, and reached across the table for a pen. "If this means getting away from Santa Carla, so be it." Dwayne had been with David the longest. He had known, or thought he had known, all he could about him. Dwayne trusted David, knew that whatever had happened to separate him from his parents was enough to keep a wedge between them for the majority of his life. He wouldn't come back now unless there were no other options. Dwayne scrawled his name on the bottom line and thrust it into Angel's hand. "Just tell this Wesley guy that I'm not going to run around all happy and cheerful and kissing his pansy ass."

Kissing ass wouldn't be something Wesley asked of him, but Angel figured that Dwayne needn't know about that just yet. Marko and Paul signed their names to their respect forms, and sent them along down the table. David smirked, and lazily raised his hand. "Didn't give me a form there, pops. What you just want me to linger? Got something available in management?"

Spike laughed, making his presence in the room known. "Yeah that sounds about right. Go on then Poof, make him head of something. Oh! Those commando buggers you used to have! Put 'im in charge or a group of them!"

The last thing Angel wanted to do was put a group of people under David's leadership. Paul, Marko and Dwayne seemed to be a good example of how badly that would turn out. No, the only way he as keeping David around was if he was under constant supervision. Angel's constant supervision.

"You're not going to work here. You want to stay here, you're going to stay in the penthouse with me, and will not be allowed out of my sight." He didn't trust him. He probably never would. There was nothing Angel could see happening that could prove he could put his faith in David. There was too much of Angelus in him. He could almost hear Spike rolling his eyes behind him. He had complete trust in David, because he was completely blind to everything he truly was. David and Spike had always been closer, but not to Spike's advantage. He couldn't see David as anything besides the baby that had been born in a blizzard in Saint Petersburg. Angel knew that child was dead, and the creature sitting at the table with him, along with his friends, were incapable of saving. That did not mean he wouldn't try, it just meant he expected no positive results.

"Gentlemen, welcome to Wolfram and Hart.


	5. Unleashed Part 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is incredibly late because I lost this chapter a couple times and had to redo it. Sorry about that. This was originally supposed to be an updated version of the whole episode but because of all the problems I have been having with it, it's going to be a two-parter. There's more to come anyway.

"Mmm...Fred honey pass the plum sauce..."

"Here you go, Lorne. Mmm...its been s long since had a picnic, this was such a good idea Angel."

"Well, you know we've all been working so hard lately that I just thought-"

"Can we actually get some food when this is over or are we just going to sit here and play pretend all night?"

Angel Investigations (and son) were sitting at some park benches, trying to cover for themselves while Wesley ran tests to ensure they were not be listened to. The illusion that they had all gone out to eat was easy to maintain, but easily destroyed. Angel groaned, "David do you not understand what it means to keep-"

"There are no bugs in the area," Wesley interrupted him, and set the equipment he had been using on the picnic table David had been occupying. "We're alone for now."

That didn't stop Angel from glaring at his son. David just shrugged and smiled innocently. That was something he had in common with Spike, being able to do whatever they wanted and not feel even the slightest shred of guilt about it. If it wasn't for Angel's big schnoze and his lackluster cheekbones, David and his mother would have been carbon copies of each other. 

"I could have told you that," David said. "I can feel whenever anyone tries to plant that shit on me. It buzzes, you know?" 

Anel just rolled his eyes and decided to get down to business before anything could happen to interrupt what they had come here for. Fred folded her arms in front of her chest, shivering against the cold. "This feels odd," She said. "Hiding from the very company that we're supposed to be running."

"Well that just happens when the very company you're running is populated by evil doers who may just be waiting to strike." Wesley pointed out. "Like Knox, for example-"

"Hey now!" Fred shouted in protest, knowing that jab was directed at his relationship with their new coworker. "Knox is not evil! He may be quirky but he's definitely not evil! And a lot of the people within the company aren't either. I see Marko, Knox and a bunch of others more than I have been seeing you guys lately. Though it's understandable...running a company doesn't leave you with a lot of time for covert operations."

At the mention of his friend, David straightened up and leaned forward. He had little time to speak with the rest of his crew this week and had been wondering how they were adjusting to office life. Marko had expressed a great interest in working with Fred in the science department, being the gigantic need he so deeply was, and Dwayne had eagerly agreed to join Wesley in his work, as it meant he had to pass through the lobby (and therefore Harmony) almost hourly. Paul had ended up with Gunn as his employer, and upon meeting him and sizing the man up, decided he wanted to live out his fantasy of being a sexy secretary. That meant dressing in leather pants, knee high boots and crop tops. That was about all David knew at the moment. 

"And then there is the matter of...Gunn." Wesley added 

Sensing that the shit was about to hit the fan, David hopped down from the bench that he had claimed, stuffed his hands in the pockets of his coat, and started walking towards the forest' edge. He could go around the trail a couple of times, and still get back before Angel Investigations finished up. His sudden departure did not go unnoticed. He could feel his father's eyes on his back, and any minute now...-

"Just where do you think you're going?" Angel asked.

"A walk." David called back over his shoulder to the group, not even breaking his stride. "I came out here to help you fight things, not listen to you and your little human chums get all antsy over your cushy jobs at Wolfram and Hart. You need me, just come get me."

Angel would still know where he was. That was the great thing about vampire senses, or the bad thing depending on how you looked at it. It was nearly impossible to hide your scent from any other vampire. They could smell nearly everything within a three hundred yard block. Right now the place reeked of Angel and his friends, of pine trees and weeds, and a couple of wild flowers that grew just at the front of the park. There was a human in the area, one unrelated to their business of being there, and given that this place was a popular spot among local university students to go for jogs, he'd have to say that the person was just another new age health nut. Whoever they were, they had no idea how lucky they were. Angel and David had both noticed his/her scent when they first arrived, and if Angel hadn't been paying attention, David would have taken this opportunity to have a good, last hunt. No doubt Angel would be making sure the human enjoyed their run undisturbed. Some other time, perhaps...

David started walking down the well worn out path, hands buried deep in his pockets and lazily whistling to himself to ward off the feeling of loneliness. He missed his brothers, and whatever wild antics they were getting up to at Wolfram and Hart. He wondered if Paul had made any success in his quest to seduce his employer, and if Marko had gone ahead and befriended any small animals that dwelt on the rooftop or in the basement of the office. Rats, bats, pigeons, stray cats, even squirrels all seemed completely entranced by the vampire and flocked to him wherever he went. He was like an undead Snow White! Which would have made the story a lot more interesting...

He stopped, having heard something coming from up ahead. He could smell the human from earlier coming this way, and the closer he was to them, the more he was able to pick up about them. The human was a female, a young adult, he had been correct when he assumed she had been around college age. Pretty young thing, the type of girl that David would have normally been drawn to. Blonde, short hair, decent shape, in the old days he would have eagerly chased her down and had a nice meal. 

...

...In the old days? God, he was beginning to sound like his father. 

Something was wrong with her. Her adrenaline levels were spiked and she was muttering things while she ran. That was when David caught scent of the most horrid and toxic thing he had ever encountered in over a hundred years of life. He gaged, and covered his nose and mouth with his hands, trying to get the nauseating smell out of his mind. It smelled like someone blended rotten eggs, sardines, and spoiled meat together in a blender. Something was chasing the girl, and whatever it was, it wasn't human. 

She was running right at him and David found a bit of irony in that. He was her savior, the only person she saw around, the only one who could save her from whatever beast was pursuing her, would have just as easily snapped her neck a couple nights ago. The girl was only a couple feet down the trail when she tripped over an upturned tree root, and the creature was able to catch up. It started biting at her, ripping into her soft, young, milky flesh and blood sprayed everywhere. The beast was easily identifiable. Thick, matted, filthy grey fur, a canine face, and human movements; definitely a werewolf. They didn't have many of those in Santa Carla but David had tangled with them before and knew how to handle them. After all, when a dog gets a taste of blood it's never the same. You have to put them down. 

He let his fangs slip out, and growled to catch the wolf's attention. Both the furry beast and the girl looked over at him, took in his wild eyes, sharp and rigid fangs, and long, claw-like fingernails, and just as easily as he had been able to identify the werewolf, they knew what he was. It wasn't as if he was hard to confuse for anything else. David watched the werewolf'd eyes fill up with hunger and desire. It was a well known fact to all races, both supernatural and natural, that werewolves found vampire blood to be a delicacy, much like the blood of a slayer was an aphrodisiac to vampires. The werewolf let the girl drop from it's meaty, clawed hold, and howled before charging at the better target. Good, David had been aching for a good kill. 

Feeling generous David let the creature pin him, let the wolf think it had the upper hand for a moment. It howled in David's face, spewing saliva mixed with the girl's blood and chunks of squirrel meat from a meal from god knows when all over him. That was the end of David's generosity. He scowled, and reached up to dig his nails into the beast's neck, and wrapped his arms around it's fat head. Before it could let out a howl, David snapped it's neck and pushed the wolf off of him. That was definitely the last time he was going to try and show mercy. He stood up, and wiped his face off with the sleeve of his jacket. 

"That was disgusting..." He grumbled to himself, only to realize that the girl was still there and watching him. She was bleeding from where the wolf had bitten her, and holding her tiny little hands against her wounds to try and stop the bleeding. She was panting, and staring at him. David had forgotten about her for a moment. He had been so wrapped up in killing the creature, in getting his blood lust situated for the night, she had slipped his mind for a moment or so. He didn't know what to do. Decades spent luring people to their death, what was one supposed to do to comfort those who had come incredibly close? "...Erm...D-do you need any help there ma'am? Is there someone who you can call or...?"

She screamed, stumbled to her feet, and took off running the way she had came. 

So that was why vampires never bothered helping humans, they never got any respect or even a thank you for it. How rude. 

...Wait a minute. Was he actually considered about _manners_? Max must have been laughing his five hundred year old ass off down in hell.

"I must be loosing my mind..." David mumbled to himself. He would have to find one of his brothers and try and soothe his nerves about this little slip up later. Marko or Dwayne would be more suitable for the task, given that they would actually express concern for his sudden changes, where as Paul would just laugh, call him a sissy, and proceed to apply more eyeliner without catching onto the irony of the whole thing. 

...

Jesus what was wrong with him?! First manners, and now he's all wrapped up in ironic moments of his life! Angel was rubbing off on him, and David could tell if he didn't kill something innocent soon, he was going to be coming downstairs in a suite and tie to some cubicle job in a month tops! What kind of life was that for any decent creature of the night!? Angelus would be so disappointed and ashamed of what he and his son had become...

"David..."

Speak of the devil, and he will appear. 

Angel was standing on the forest' edge, a pen tightly clenched in one hand and the other loosely at his side. His eyes weren't on his son though, they were on the dead man at his son's feet. Nasty and inconvenient thing about werewolves, they always turned back to humans after they had died. It made proving the creatures existed to any respected human documentation pretty near impossible. David looked at the naked, filthy man laying dead on the ground, and at the small cuts on his neck from where David had dug his nails into him, and then back at his hands. There was blood under his nails.

He held his hands up defensively. "Listen," He said slowly, trying to find the right words. "This isn't what it looks like. I can totally explain...-"

* * *

 "He did _what_?!"

" _Our David_?! Are you sure that it was our David?!"

"I honestly never thought he had it in him...Are you really sure? Like, one hundred percent?"

Harmony leaned back against the counter in the employee break room while she waited for Angel's blood to heat up. While she had been there, Marko and Dwayne came in to have their lunch breaks and they got to talking. She had known that Angel had intended to split the boys up, to try and limit the time they spent around each other and introduce them to new and better influences, but she didn't believe that they were so out of the loop that they had no idea of what their former leader had gotten up to the night before when he went out with his father. They were having a hard time buying what he'd done. It was something that would have required them being there and witnessing it with their own eyes in order for them to believe it. 

"Yes, I'm sure! Angel was talking about it with the guys this morning! David saved a girl's life, a human girl, by killing this werewolf that was after her. He's a hero-" Now, she could have gone into the little moral dilemmas Angel was having with the fact that someone had been killed by his kid in general, but to put it simply, most of Angel's crew thought David had done a good job and that was something Dwayne and Marko just couldn't understand. 

"David is not a hero!" Marko insisted, all interest in the lunch he had come in here to eat completely lost. "David is a cold blooded killer, like the rest of us! He can't be a hero!"

"He's killed more innocent lives than the Ebola virus and high speed car races in the late 1980s combined!" Dwayne added. "Why would he try and save some...regular human. It just doesn't make sense!"

Harmony was never going to understand boys. Quite frankly, she didn't want to. Their minds were all full of sports and icky things. "If you guys didn't want to be good, then why did you come here?" She asked, raising a good point. Wolfram and Hart was known for being an evil corporation but Angel was not. His friends were not. Spike, who wasn't technically a friend, was not. "I mean, I know how hard it is to get up every morning and gobble down pig's blood when there's a walking buffet table just outside your door, but we deal. We deal because it's the right thing to do. And also because I need this job to buy new shoes and getting fired by Angel usually means getting my head cut off with a sword but you know. New shoes, the threat of death, and because it's right."

Dwayne and Marko exchanged looks and decided it was probably for the best not to mention that they were only here because they were out of options to her. Besides, Dwayne was sweet on the girl, and telling her he wasn't here to do the good thing wouldn't get him any closer to her bed. 

"So," Harmony said, trying to change the subject. "Your friend Paul is kinda cute, especially when he has his leather pants on! Think he would be interested in going out to get drinks sometime?"

....And there it was, yet another reason Dwayne might consider castrating his brother before the week was over. Damn those leather pants!

"I don't think he'd be interested in right now, Harmony." Marko said, noticing the vein pulsing on Dwayne's forehead. Any more stress and it was going to pop! It would be interesting to watch of course, but also super messy and hard to clean up. "He's got his heart set on having an affair with his boss right now, and when Paul sets his mind to something he does go all out. It's kinda the only redeeming thing about him besides how his ass looks in leather pants. Which, I do have to admit, is damn fine."

God bless those leather pants! They drew attention away from his brother's endless list of character faults, and drew them towards the one good thing he had going on for him. Though Marko, Dwayne and David had agreed long ago never to tell him that. The last thing Paul needed was another boost to his ego. 


	6. Unleashed Part 2

"She was bitten," David said, peering over his father's shoulder at the sketch he had done of the werewolf victim from the night before. It had been a good thing that David had managed to get a good enough look at her, or else they would have never been able to track her down. Not that the sketch was helping much at the moment. "Saw and smelled the blood on him."

"Tonight's the second night of the full moon. Which means we have two more nights for her to go all dog girl." Gunn replied, walking through the lobby of the firm with both his boss and David. This was a critical matter that required all of the big guns to assemble. If thy didn't hurry, this girl would end up just like the guy David killed. In the meantime, Paul was fairly content faxing documents and making coffee. He may have been a stoner, may have been a bit brain dead, but the guy did know how to loose himself in his work.

"If she hurts anyone-" Angel started to say, forever trapped in a whirling vortex of self-pity and worst case scenarios.

"She won't. We'll find her." Gunn promised him, and David just kept his mouth shut. He was hoping they didn't. That way, he could kill something again without getting the boot for it.

Angel grumbled something that sounded a lot like "We better." And hit the button for the elevator. Fred and Marko should have completed their autopsy of the body by now and Angel Investigations had to figure out what they were dealing with. "She's not going to have any idea of what's going on."

"She will soon." David said with a slight shrug of his shoulders. Win some, you loose some, predator and prey, all that nonsense about the circle of life. "Only morons take more than a couple days of strange behavior at nights, and nearly ripping out your loved ones' throats, to piece tiger her you're turning supernatural." Here's looking at you, Michael Emerson. You stupid son of a bitch.

Angel grumbled something again but this time it was quiet enough so even David with his excellent vampiric hearing could tell what he'd said. Gunn shifted awkwardly, and pulled a Manila file out from his lawyer's briefcase. "So I ran some info on the guy David killed-"

David grinned, quite proud of the fact that his dad's buddies were practically worshipping him for doing what Angel had whined about for nearly a hundred years in a gutter, while the big guy himself emitted something that sounded like some hybrid of a sigh and a groan. He was still whining over that killing shit. Gunn, used to this behavior by now, kept going.

"Credit card info, police reports, all that juicy stuff. Guy left his wife and kids a few years ago, stayed to himself, travelled to places in the middle of nowhere. It was only a year ago a coupled mangled bodies started showing up but these last six months, guy was leaving corpses like breadcrumbs."

The elevator dinged behind them and the three stepped inside. "Probably tried controlling it for awhile and then just gave up." Angel explained, and David could tell his father was having another one of his pity parties. Pitying the monster that tore up a bunch of innocent hikers and campers. That was so like him. Angel didn't stop there.

"Thought he had to fight it alone and wound up having nothing worth fighting for."

"Funny you're saying that." David mumbled to himself, distinctly recalling a time when Angel needed to fight something and chose to roll the solo route. But the lessons Angel tried to teach all his wonderful little human cronies didn't apply to him, now did they? Man he was lucky all that stuff about vampires being able to read each other's minds was a load of crap, otherwise his father would have probably taken him over his knee, like Angelus used to.

"But that girl, she's not alone. She's got us."

Funny, David thought. The people around here don't even have each other.

~~

Marko, fresh off his lunch break, sat down in the wheeled chair behind Fred's desk as she hurried to get a couple last minute files under control. He did a little spin of the room, as she scurried along, carrying a piece of paper over to an old text book she had lying around, to check her calculations. Spike appeared a couple feet away in the doorway, entered, and smiled mischievously,

"Well, aren't we the busy little beavers?"

Marko did another spin in his chair. "Hey Spike." Should he call him Spike? He never hung around people's parents before. And if he couldn't call him Spike, what could he call him? Sir? David's mom? Did he have a last name he could use?

Seeing Fred running around between her computer and the book she'd pulled out, Spike actually managed to smile. At least someone around this damn office was working to get him all right, solid and proper again. "I don't suppose all this bugaboo is about yours ghostly?"

"Oh, no. Not you. It's about-" Fred started to explain but Spike already knew the answer. He shouldn't have gotten his hopes up.

"-Werewolf girl." He gave a small nod, just to seem like he wasn't as upset as he felt. "Right. Heard about that. Bloody shame about the poor little miss but-"

Fred closed her book, and her laptop, knowing that Angel would be down any minute with Gunn and David to examine the body. "Spike, I'm sorry but I'm kinda busy right now with a situation."

...A situation? So being classified as a werewolf was a situation but being a ghost stuck between the panels of a dimension was not?!

"Hey!" He exclaimed, chasing after the girl. "I'm a situation, remember? I'm a bloody phantom. And you two, with your serious spectacles, we're going to help me with my bloody little problem."

"I know and we bloody will." Fred said, still shuffling around in her papers.

"We have some ideas." Marko added for safe measures.

Hearing this, Spike perked up a bit. "Really? What? What ideas?"

"They're going to have to wait til'-"

"Later?" Spike asked. "There may not be a later luvs....it's getting worse."

Fred stood up straight, loosing all interest in what she had been searching for. She looked over at Marko, who had fallen silent, and stopped spinning around in his chair. She then looked back at the ghost. "Worse? You mean you're-"

"I'm winking out of existence? Yeah. And I'm not talking about quick pops to the netherworld. They're lasting longer now." He could feel himself starting to slip. He knew he was running out of time to avoid disappearing all together. And worse yet, his only shot of becoming solid again weren't available. They were too busy running around for the great and mighty Angel. Bollocks.

"H-how long?" Marko asked.

"Feels like forever. Somethings trying to hold onto me on the other side. And if you two don't do something soon...I may not come back."

This didn't sound like something that should be handled by the science department. "Wesley might be able to-" Fred started to suggest but Spike cut her off.

"No."

"He knows more about the mystical than-"

"I can't!" Spike paused, trying to come up with the best way of wording what he wanted to say. "We have a history. Him and me."

Fred and Marko remained quiet, letting this run its course.

For mood, Spike tilted his head downwards and plastered a grim, guilt ridden look across his face. "It was a long time ago," he said quietly. "He was a young watcher, fresh out of the academy, and we crossed paths. It was, what do you call it? A battle of wills. Blood was spilled, vendettas were sworn. It was a whole..."

"My god...you're so full of crap." Fred mumbled, turned on her heel and went back to digging through her old stacks of books, papers and charts. . Marko started spinning in his chair again, not seeing this leading anywhere serious where he would have to move again.

"Yeah," Spike admitted. "Okay. Truth is I just don't want anyone else knowing about my condition. The last thing I need right now is this getting back to Angel!"

Fred slammed a large book down on a table in front of Spike, opened the cover, and started searching through its thick, musty pages. "Spike I appreciate your condition but right now we have a more pressing priority. Like finding and helping this girl."

"And me?" The former vampire asked. "I'm just supposed to fade into nothingness."

Marko snorted, "That's a tad dramatic ain't it?" He asked. "Look just try not to disappear and as soon as we find dog-girl, we'll get right on helping you. Or Fred will. And I'll help Fred by bringing her caffeine." He stood up, stretched, and collected the books Fred needed off the table. As for the girl, after finding the paragraph she needed and taking a few notes, she grabbed her keycard and lead her assistant back over to the door.

"Trust me Spike," she called back over her shoulder to him. "In this place, we got everything."

~~~~

"We're useless is that what you're trying to tell me?" Angel asked, "All these resources and we can't do anything?"

He was pacing around the lab, David following behind him for the sake of killing his own boredom, and trying to get a handle on the situation.

"How many years of history on some dead guy and your people can't get a single lead on a living, breathing girl?" David asked. "Sounds useless to me."

If he hadn't been so preoccupied with saving this woman, Angel may have pulled David aside and give him a nice long lecture on how saying things like that would end up with him living on the streets.

"We're doing the best we can." Wesley said, running by and setting some mystic journals down.

David went over to a piece of equipment that had been brought out to aid in the search earlier. It was shiny, and silver, and no doubt more expensive than anything he had the pleasure of owning. He looked in the metal's reflection, didn't see his own, and grinned while his father ran around asking about details, about the attack scene, about anything. He smelled Spike enter the room, but given that he didn't say anything, David took it as a sign he didn't want to be addressed right now.

"You know what your problem is?" He asked his father. "You're thinking too much about this. All these flashy, high tech things are blinding you. You want to find this girl, gotta go back to the basics."

Wesley scoffed at the very thought. Hours of research and state of the art equipment couldn't find a missing girl, but David somehow thought he would fair any better? Preposterous. "And just what do you mean by that?"

"I smelled her blood. I know her scent. You give me about three hours and I'll find your girl."

Angelus taught him how to track his prey for miles around. An odd skill to possess, seeing as he went in for the kill before his victims had a chance to flee, but it was one David kept improving on, kept close to him. He enjoyed tracking, watching his prey squirm as he drew ever closer. He would have never imagined using this skill to benefit a human life but it came in handy, that was for damn sure.

Unlike Angelus, Angel saw no practical use for anything his former self did, so he opted to wave David off and return to crunching the numbers.

Great, over a hundred years old and his father was still treating him like a little boy. "If I take one of your minions, can I at least try to track the broad?"

If Angel heard him, he said nothing. Fred had brought out some maps of the area the park was located in and was trying her best to chart a search party with Angel looking over her shoulder. Neither of them was going to be of any use. David turned, and saw Gunn looking over some of the notes they had been able to gather about the case in general. Former vampire hunter, one of the old man's best friends, super trustworthy. He would do. David doubled back towards the elevator and tapped Gunn on the shoulder on the way out, "Come on." He told him, "Going to go find the girl. Need you to drive." Preferably in a car with boarded windows where David could hide safely in the backseat. Knowing his father, turning to a giant pile of ash and staining his viper would be something that earned his ghost a lecture.

After days of nonstop cases and paperwork, Gunn didn't argue. Gunn set the files he'd been looking at done and followed David out. After grabbing a stake, just in case.

~~~~

1885

There was something oddly familiar about the man David noticed crossing the street ahead of them. It was this sense of familiarity that drew him towards this stranger. It tickled his nostrils, made his mind race, but yet he couldn't identify where it came from, what relationship he had with the man to have known him. A relative of a recent meal? An old neighbor who got away lucky? It was all possible.

A crowd started to filter out from the theatre a couple doors down, crowding the busy street and allowing a perfect cover. David slipped his tiny hand out from the grip of that of his mother's, and hurried along after the man, dodging between people's legs and ignoring their complaints. He faintly could hear his mother calling for him, but he was so drawn to this human, he had to figure out why.

He followed him out of town and to a small rural village farther than David had originally intended to go. The man stopped at a park bench, lit up a pip, and started to smoke as he watched the stars in the dark sky blossom before him. He smelled bitter, sad, but for whatever reason David still did not know. The boy stayed back in a nearby brush, watching him, waiting to see what he would do next. He smelled his parents before they finally reached him, and crouched beside him in the bushes. His father brought their foreheads together, so they could speak without being heard.

"You scared us."

"I'm sorry. I just had to see where this man was going."

"The man?"

"He smelled funny."

"You followed him out here by yourself?! Miles from town?!"

"Are you mad?"

"Hell no! You know how long it took your ma or Dru ta learn ta track this good?! That's me boy!"

David beamed proudly, and pulled his head back. He wanted to see his mother and what he had to say about this. Will was looking past them both, starring at the man. He was frowning, and studying the man, but he didn't seem pleased about it.

"Mummy?"

Will stood up slowly and walked out from the brush and onto the path that went by the bench. He stopped by the man, pausing, and then looked towards him. "Robert?"

The man looked up from his pip and nearly choked on the smoke. "William? William Pratt?!" He bolted up from the bench and stumbled towards the other. "Good god man! Where have you been?! No one has seen heads or tails of you or your mother since my dinner party years ago!"

From their hideaway in the brush, Angelus let out a low whistle. "You smelled your mother," he told David. "Your ma hung around this guy years before you were born and you could still smell traces of him on the guy. Impressive laddie."

David wasn't thinking about that though. He was watching the man talk with Will, more specifically, watching how Will shifted and squirmed nervously as the kept rambling on. It was obvious that Will didn't care for the man he was talking with, and was only doing such as a way of gaining the element of surprise.

There was more than one way to do that.

David stood up and ran to Will's side, latching onto his leg and giggling the way a human child would. Will said nothing to him, but ran his hands through his sons' hair.

"I was busy."

Robert chuckled, "I should say so. Don't tell me that Cecily accepted your proposal? Lord knows she carried herself above us all."

Will growled, but did not say anything in response. He kept running his hands through David's dirty blond hair, and waiting for Angelus to show up. That was how these games always ended up. This time, his grandsire had other plans.

Robert knelt down so he was at eye level with David, and grinned. "Aren't you a handsome young man. You the reason Will hasn't been coming to my parties anymore?"

David didn't answer. He shifted, let his fangs come out and launched himself at Robert's throat. He ripped out a chunk of the man's throat, making blood spray out in a shower, so when Robert tried to scream more would spurt. David licked at some that spilled on the man's neck, and then sank his fangs into Robert's shoulder. He drank enough for Robert to spill into a coma and then pulled back. "Hungry mum?"

"No thanks baby boy. You go ahead."

By now Angelus had stepped out from the brush and stood by Will, watching as their boy fed. "Expert tracking, made his first kill as such a young age...what a lad. I love that kid." He was everything a vampire could wish for in a son.

They would start spending more time showing David how to properly track a person in the days to come.

~~~~

Benefits of working for Wolfram and Hart #1: Glass that protects vampires from sunlight being used in both office windows and car windows. Having never been able to step foot in the sunlight before, being able to ride along in the front seat of Angel's viper as Gunn drove along following his directions in the early morning hours was a first time experience. David had his temple pressed against the window, tying to keep the girl's scent without rolling down the window.

"Turn left here." He told Gunn. "It's stronger this."

The newly appointed attorney nodded, and turned the car off onto a side street. It was a nice little suburb, picket fences and everything. Somehow it felt right for the girl he'd saved. She looked like a regular girl, a perfect fit in this type of neighborhood. Not a hair out of place.

"The one at the end," He told Gunn. "She's in there."

David was surprised that Gunn was following his directions, given his history of hatred for vampires, but after working with Angel for so long David supposed that it would be inappropriate for Gunn to even consider harming him. They pulled in, and sized up the house.

"She alone?" Gunn asked, "Things will go a lot smoother if she's alone in the house."

The air around the house was thick with her scent, but there were others, and the unmissable thumping of multiple heartbeats. "No. There's more. Two others."

"We should move quickly. There's a lot of really strange groups here that would love to have a werewolf in their custody." Gunn was about to open the door when he realized something that had been forgotten in the rush to get out here. "David, how are you going to go in without burning up?"

Having been prepared for this moment, David pulled a thick, heavy brown blanket from the back seat and wrapped himself up in it. He opened the door, and made a run for the front porch. The less time he had to spend on the front porch, the better. Gunn got out and jogged after him. He knocked on the door, seeing as David had his hands occupied, and waited. A woman came to the door, blonde hair tied neatly back and an apron tied around her waist. She did a double take when she saw David standing there all bundled up, but remained calm. "Can I help you gentlemen?"

"Sorry to bother you ma'am but we're from Wolfram and Hart. My name is Charles Gunn and this is my associate David...-"

"Aurelius. David Aurelius." David finished. "There was an incident at a park last night that we're investigating. May we come in?"

The woman nodded, and stepped aside. "Yeah, sure..."

David nodded and stepped inside quickly, anxious to get out of the sun, he kept the blanket around his shoulders, and went in to sit on a couch in the living room. Gunn followed him, and sat down beside him. The woman shut the door behind him, and came in and sat down on an armchair.

"May I ask why you're here? What's going on?" She asked. "You said something about an incident at a park...what was that?"

This wasn't the woman David saved at the park. Therefore she didn't matter. "Do you have a sister? Around the same age?" He asked, "Shorter hair...works with art supplies?" He smelled paint on the girl when he'd met her. She had to have been an art student of something.

The woman frowned, "Y-yes, that's my sister Nina. She's upstairs with my daughter right now."

"Would you mind going and getting her for us?" Gunn asked, "We have some questions we want to ask her."

The woman didn't need to get up. There was the sound of footsteps coming down the stairs, and a woman who could only be Nina stepped into the living room. She froze, spotting the strangers in her living room. "Hey...who are these?"

That was her. That was the girl David saved. He wasn't sure what to do, what to say after doing such a thing, so he let Gunn take control of the situation.

"Ma'am, my name is Gunn and this is my associate David. We're here to ask you a couple questions about what happened last night."

"Last night?" Nina asked, "I don't...remember what happened last night? I felt pretty sick and went to bed right after my jog."

Traumatic events were often pushed aside in the minds of victims. At least when it came to supernatural attacks. David sighed, knowing he was going to have to get his hands a tad dirty, regardless of what Angel the ought about the situation. He locked eyes with Nina, and his eyes flashed gold, "Do you remember me?"

She collapsed to her knees, memories flooding back, and overwhelming her. Nina's sister rushed to her side, helped her back to her feet, but Nina didn't take her eyes off of David, off of her savior.

"You were there..." She stated. "You were there and you killed it....killed that wolf..."

There we go. There was progress. "I saved your life," David reminded her. "But you're not out of the woods yet. The firm we work at handles special cases like this. If you come with us we can get you set up, make sure nothing like that happens again."

He didn't really care either way. Bitch screamed at his face right after he fought for her life. But this meant a lot to his father for some reason so he'd do what Angel pleased.

Nina nodded slowly, "Alright..." She practically squeaked. "But...I just have one question..."

This should be good. "Let me guess, What are you?"

"No...what will this cost?"

David couldn't help it. He fucking laughed.

~~~~~~

If it wasn't for a hastily written note stuck to the front of Gunn's office door, Angel would have already sent the special ops team after him and David. How hard was it for him to stay put? To follow orders? To not go running off all recklessly and doing things the messy way?!...He was too much like Spike and it was bad enough just having one of him around before.

It had been hours and still nothing on the girl. Lorne had run off a couple minutes ago, having had an idea, and Fred was still leading Marko around and showing him how to prefer an autopsy on their werewolf corpse, Dwayne and Wesley were going through any spells or parchment on lycanthropy they could find, Spike was god knows where again, and Angel...Angel was in his office brooding.

He should have never trusted David. He knew how he could be. It wouldn't surprise him if he had forced Gunn to write that note and had taken him hostage or something worse...if they didn't return in an hour or so Angel was going out after them.

The intercom buzzed and Harmony came on the other line. "Boss, you said to call when Gunn and David were back-"

"Yeah? And?"

"They're back. And they have the girl with them."

...

Son of a bitch. Angel got up from his chair and went out into the lobby to see for himself. Sure enough, sitting on one of the plush recliners, having a seemingly nice chat with his son, was the girl who'd been attacked by the werewolf last night. Gunn was on the phone a couple feet away.

"-Okay so you're going to want to find this Manila folder that says Lycanthropy hunting laws. Yeah that's the one Paul. Okay, I want you to bring it out here but first I need you to do a company wide search for any groups or clients who hunt werewolves. N-no! Paul what the hell?! Look, just get the folder and the list okay? Okay." He hung up quickly, face twisted up in disgust. "He made a very unfortunate doggy-style joke." He told Angel, though his boss clearly had no desire to hear such a thing. "You get Harmony, Wesley gets the most obedient assistant ever, Fred gets Marko who actually seems to enjoy this job, and I get.... _that_."

Angel rolled his eyes. "You could have done worse." They all could have. He didn't want to know what Gunn was up to quite just yet so he went past him, and stopped beside David and the girl he'd spend nearly a day hunting down. She seemed...happy. Calm even. David was making her calm about her situation. That didn't matter. "I told you that you were supposed to leave without me."

Really? This was how it was going to be? David should have known. "I was right though wasn't I? My way works. If we had done it your way it would have taken forever to find Miss Nina here, and knowing you it would have lead to chases, attacks, and possibly even a death or two."

"It still could-"

David grinned wickedly, and gestured towards the lawyer who'd helped him out. "Actually it won't. Gunn's filing a class action suit for Lycan rights. Nina and all other werewolves in California are about to be put on the endangered species list, meaning any hunting unless in cases were they are killing humans first, will be protected by demon law." Check-fucking-mate.

Angel's right eye started to twitch. "I see..." He growled. "But have you stopped to ask how Miss Nina feels about all of this?"

The girl in question shrugged her shoulders, "I actually feel a lot better." She confessed. "The attack was traumatic...but I'm moving past that. David was just telling me about all the other different types of monsters- is monsters the preferred term? -that live in LA. Vampires, demons, witches...I can find support groups that'll help me adjust, will help my family adjust when I decide to tell them. Not to mention being able to stay here on the full moon! As far as becoming a mythical beast with the strength of ten men and unstoppable hunger for human flesh goes, David's making it go pretty smoothly for me." She smiled over at him. "He's getting really good at saving my life."

Still grinning, David kicked his feet up on the coffee table, getting more comfortable. "No problem darlin'. It's what I do. Huh Angel?"

...He was going to kill this kid.

"So are you a Frankenstein or something?" Nina asked. "I mean, you're not human, clearly, so are you like a living corpse?"

...Angel was really going to fucking kill this kid!

~~~~~~

Marko was heading up to his apartment in one of the elevators at the end of the day. Dwayne had left for the bar district with Paul an hour prior, both wanting to drown out any feelings that possibly remained after being unnoticed or openly rejected by their targets. Love was weird, although Marko didn't think this classified as love just yet. Lust was better. Dwayne wanted to fuck Harmony and Paul wanted Gunn to fuck him, but that was probably never going to happen.

The door opened on the next floor up and David joined him in the elevator, still grinning from sticking it to his father earlier. "Hey Marko."

"Hey." It felt kinda weird meeting like this. He was so used to it being the four of them, in their little cave by the beach... "Angel still pissed?"

"Of course, but what's he going to do? I saved the girl, prevented who knows how many deaths, and proved that he needs to pay more attention in the future. Not like he can kick me out after that." He could try, though after all his success today David doubted that his friends would let him. "You haven't seen Spike around have you? I wanted to tell him about what happened with Nina. Figured he'd get a real kick out of it."

Spike...

Come to think of it, Marko hadn't seen Spike since earlier that day in the office with Fred when he was talking about slipping into hell.

He couldn't have...

"Marko?" David asked, noticing how quiet his brother had gotten. Something hadn't happened while he'd been gone, had it? "What's up?"

Spike hadn't wanted him to tell David, didn't want his son to worry...well maybe it was time to start worrying.

"David, about your mother...-"


	7. Hell Bound Part One

Seeing as the situation with Nina was finally resolved, Fred was able to redirect all of her focus back to recorporealizing Spike before he ended up stranded wherever in the worlds he was going to when he disappeared. She had been racking up quite a bill in the lab, running around trying to get the most high tech pieces of equipment flown in from the farthest reaches of the technological world, having her employees running around doing overtime, even sending Marko on some trips to back alley magic stores in the grungier part of LA in order to try and track down some enchanted equipment. And if the work wasn't hard enough already, Spike being ever present, popping up every so often to try and spook the little science nerds, made it a hell of a lot harder. Not because they were actually frightened of him. No, of course not, it was just seeing him around, always checking in only to hear that they were no farther along in the process than before and seeing how disappointed he became...He was loosing hope. Fred could see it in the vampire's eyes every time he heard the same old news over and over again. 

So she'd humor him whenever he tried to give her a good scarring, though by now he was more than aware of what she was doing. At this point in the cycle, he was just walking in to talk with her and her assistant through the walls more and more. Tonight, after the last of the underlings left to call it a night, was no different. He strode in through the far right wall, spotted them hunched over a couple old books Marko had pulled from a magic store in a slummy area, and tapped the girl on the shoulder. Once again, his hand just went clear through her. 

"It's not been fun..." He mumbled, "Spent the day trying to help that Ape-looking friend of David's move some stuff for Percy but...you know." It had been the same thing then. No lifting or basic contact for Spike.

Fred turned around, and noted that there was bags beginning to developed under Spike's eyes despite years of getting little, if any, sleep to begin with, coupled with the fact he no longer could being dead. "Still no interaction..." They were running out of time, she could feel it, and if she wasn't mistaken she would have to say that things were getting a whole lot worse. 

The blond nodded, and started pacing around the room, occasionally walking through the table Marko was still using to read. "Yea. Can't toss about the knick-knacks, can't give the locals the willies. Bloody pathetic ghost I turned out to be..." 

"You're not a ghost," Marko corrected him. "Fred's told you before that you're not a ghost." As much as it pained him to get involved so deeply with humans, he had to admit that this girl here was smart. Treated him pretty nicely too, considering a couple weeks back he would have made a tasty snack outta her! Treated just about everyone in this damn place nicely...some people just couldn't be mean or nasty. Didn't have it in 'em. Fred was one of them. 

"Chipper! Give us a hug then!" Spike said, and held his arms open. 

Marko was really getting to see where David got his whole... _thing_ from. He rolled his eyes, and went back to reading. "You know what I mean."

"Yes." Fred said in agreement. "You're more than a common specter. In all my years of working with Angel and the paranormal, we've never encountered anything like you." She lifted one of her scanners off a nearby tray and started to work on another routine scan of the vampire. While she did this Spike smiled quite cockily, and even went so far as to flirt with the girl a tiny bit. She blushed and snickered a bit, but by now she had caught on to how this vampire charm thing worked and wasn't going to fall for any of Spike's smooth words and not so subtle jokes. The scanner emitted a soft beep when it was done, and she looked down and frowned at the numbers it produced. "...Your heat signature has dropped another 0.2 degrees. 

"...Thought it was a bit nippy..."

He wasn't going to finish this chapter tonight or anytime soon. With that in mind, Marko shut the book he'd been reading, and leaned back against the table. "So...how's everything else?" He asked. "I mean...how are you...?"

"Holding up?" Spike supplied for him. "Feeling the tug of eternal damnation? I don't know pet....but maybe that's why I can't touch anything. I'm using all of my mentalies to keep from slipping into hell..."

"That's not going to happen." Fred told them both. "We're not going to let that happen. I've been working on a theory...er...a hunch. But I'm getting close and I think that we may be able to make you corporeal again. Although I'm not so sure about how Angel is going to feel about the prophecy-"

Spike scowled at the mention of his grandsire, though he had yet to hear anything about some sort of prophecy...what was that big brute hiding from him this time? "What prophecy?"

"The Shanshu prophecy," Fred said with a shrug, "It says that if Angel helps enough people he gets to become a human again."

"A...vampire becoming human...after he's made his first kill?" Marko asked, looking for some sort of clarification. That didn't sound the slightest bit real to him. Why on Earth would anyone want to go back to being what they were before...before the bite, or before they drank the blood of their sire, or in David's case, were simply born?! And why hadn't he mentioned it to any of them sooner?!...Was he afraid that Spike or one of them may try and make a grab for it? Or that once he was a real boy again, that his former peers would turn on him and try to eat him!? Either way, Marko had a feeling that this was not something he should be bringing up around David. He was already walking on thin ice with Angel, and who knew what was going to set them off...

"Hey!" Fred exclaimed, looking over one of the result sheets she had printed out from an earlier experiment with a pleased grin. "That totally makes sense! The fluctuations in your readings Spike! It's because of lack of particle cohesion! It's almost as if he's straddling a dimensional void! Which could be the key assuming that the amulet you used to save the world is some sort of trans-reality amplifier...capable of holding large quantities of mystical energy."

"And just what in the king's English does that mean?"

"It means that if I can defy most of the laws of nature...there's a good chance that we can anchor you to this plain and make you corporeal!" 

Both vampires in the lab grinned at this announcement, with a heavy feeling finally being lifted off their shoulders. Marko could tell David, could say that what he'd said earlier about his mother possibly sinking in to the depths of hell was some mistake or maybe even a cruel, poorly timed joke. David would be a bit crabby about that for a couple days, but he could respect Marko's decision to try and be cruel to his own kind, seeing as he could no longer do such to the humans, and then everything would work out! Spike seemed like he didn't want to be around this place anymore than the Lost Boys, and he seemed to still care strongly for his estranged son...if Spike became solid again he would leave and he could offer them all protection! They would go somewhere far from the Frogs, from the Emersons, from Angel and they could be themselves again!

"Well," Spike said, and for once Fred could see hope returning to his eyes. "There may just be a hug in you two's future after all." He placed his hand on a desk to try and lean on it, and fell clear through it and the floor of the lab.

"...Spike?!"

* * *

Twenty minutes after Spike disappeared and had yet to make a reappearance, Fred took that as a signal to get to work as quickly as she possibly could on getting him back to solid form. She gave Marko a list of everything that she would need to make the experiment work, and sent him to the other offices to get the equipment while she stayed in the lab and tried to piece together that from which they already had gathered. Along the way, Marko took the time to scribble little notes in the margins as he handed out every list to those who they needed help from. Mainly Wesley, who was conveniently situated behind his desk. Marko set the list down on top of the file he had been examining and hurried off, only saying, "Fred needs these quickly." to the former watcher before scurrying off to hand out the rest of the supply lists. He passed Dwayne in the hallway, and ignored the strange look the other vampire was giving him. Thinking nothing serious of it, Dwayne continued his trip into Wesley's office and sat down on one of the chairs that had been set up in there. "What did Marko want?"

Wesley didn't look up from the list he'd been given. "Some of the rarest antiquities the world has to offer, apparently."

Huh. Sounded more like something David would do than Marko but Dwayne hadn't been speaking as much as he used to with any of his brothers so he wouldn't put it past the little pygmy. "How soon is he going to get them?"

"Well if I exploit every connection I've made over the last month as the new head of wolfram and hart's head of research and intelligence...twenty minutes."

"Huh...So say if I wanted to get a copy of a very rare Jazz record from 1938..."

* * *

Marko finished his little tour of the senior managers' offices by heading to speak with the big guy himself. He didn't have a list of demands or anything for Angel, but he knew that David would have been lingering around his father in the office, probably lounging out on one of those nice, plush couches that seemed to occupy most of the space, and he had to tell him about these new developments immediately. He pushed the door to Angel's office open, saw Angel sitting behind his desk starring right at him, Eve standing at his side, and realized that he had walked straight into an ambush. 

"Um...Hello..." He said awkwardly, and looked around the room just to make sure his sire wasn't there. "I was...was just looking for David..."

"David is up in the penthouse. Sit down please Marko."

Oh Jesus. Here it was. They were going to kill him like they did most of their workers when Angel Investigations took over the place. Marko nodded weakly, and sat down in the chair closest to Angel's desk. "So um...what's this about Sir? I haven't been drinking human blood since we got here and I've been doing everything that Fred asked-"

"It's about Fred." Eve explained before Angel even had the chance to open his mouth. "You know that she's exceeded her quarterly budget by $800,000? And the quarter isn't over yet?"

Marko rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly. "Heh...I guess ordering pizza to the lab every Tuesday isn't helping huh?" When no one laughed at his poor attempt at making light of the situation, he decided to be blunt and hope for the best. "Look, it's going to get expensive. Fred knows that, but she's trying to do the impossible. Bringing back Spike...it's not going to be easy or cheap-"

"Funny, those are two things Spike usually is." Angel mumbled to himself, though Marko easily heard it and scowled. Of course then Angel realized the depth of everything the younger vampire had just said and nearly tripped over himself to try and address it. "Wait! Wait! What?!"

"We're...Well her really...we're trying to make Spike corporeal again...You know so he won't be all transparent, and more dead than usual...You knew about that right?" 

Angel groaned and rubbed his enormously large forehead, "This is not what I asked Fred to do...She was supposed to get rid of Spike..."

_Get rid of Spike_?! Was Angel being serious!? Marko opened his mouth to speak and to his own surprise the words didn't come out. It was almost like someone punched him in the throat. He couldn't think, couldn't properly formulate the words to explain to Angel how badly he wanted to hit him with a chair right now. After what seemed like an eternity, the words came to him. "You can't do that! You can't just...just let him stay like that! It's hell! Literal hell!" He froze. Spike hadn't wanted him to tell Angel or David and he'd already made that mistake once. Well, Angel didn't need to know all of the details about this case. "You're a champion aren't you?! That's what Fred keeps telling me! Savior of the people, well Spike falls into the constituency of the people so you can't just decide that because you don't like him you're not going to help! What kind of...of...monster would do that!?"

Eve giggled to herself. "I recommend you look up what happened to Holland Manners. Now that's an interesting story to read."

"...Hol...Holland Manners...You've done this before!? You let someone you didn't like die just because you..." Marko shook his head. "Unbelievable! That's just...UGH!" The more time he spent around David's father, the more he realized why exactly David didn't want to come crawling back to him. Whatever had happened between them couldn't have been good. And that was back when Angel had been evil! Hmm...Speaking of David...maybe he could try and gain some leverage. "Does David know you want to leave Spike a ghost?"

"This has nothing to do with David! Look, I just know that once Spike's back to the way he once was, he's just going to skip across the pond. He'll be gone-"

"And David will go with him?" Marko asked. 

Angel growled, and it took all of his will power to keep from vamping out and ripping Marko to shreds. "This is not about David! This is about-"

"Doing what's right. Or at least, that's what I thought you were all about." Having had enough of this conversation, Marko stood up and left the office. He wasn't going to tell David anything. Anything about Spike, about Angel, lest a fight between the world's most dysfunctional family lead to the end of days prematurely. He just wanted to get back to the lab, see if Fred had made any progress while he was gone, tell her about his little chat with her boss, and then take a peek into what happened to this Holland Manners fella. Whatever it was, it couldn't have been good for Eve to have brought it up like that. 

Vampire champion his ass. 

* * *

 

The rest of the day went quite smoothly following Angel's little confrontation with Marko. He grabbed a couple files from his desk to look over back at the penthouse, and took the elevator up to retire for the rest of the night. The doors opened, and from where he was Angel could see that David was still asleep on the couch, exactly where he had been when he'd told him to take today off. Angel stepped inside, and a familiar presence made himself known. 

"So," Spike said, leaning back against the wall as best a ghost could. "What's on the agenda? Rousting a nest of venomous retirement plans?"

Angel grabbed himself a drink, finding he always needed one in order to put up with his grandchilde popping in and out of his penthouse at all hours of the damn night. He fixed it quickly, took a long, refreshing sip, and realized something that struck him as odd. "How long have you been here waiting for me?"

"Couple hours."

"Yeah...and you didn't wake David to talk or anything?"

"No." 

"So you were essentially watching him sleep the entire time you were up here waiting for me?"

The younger of the two snorted, "Don't make it weird or nothin. Was gonna but he looked too damn peaceful." It felt good to see something peaceful for once, to experience something without having to worry about the creatures he had seen earlier that day when he had disappeared. Being the ghost of one of the most feared vampires of all time, Spike rarely got scared or nervous or nothing, but the constant presence of other specters was beginning to put him on edge. One'd said something about someone coming...but it couldn't have been too important or anything. It was just some freaky coincident. "You used to, too."

"What?"

"You used to watch him sleep. Back when he was just a wee lad." 

Angel took another long drink before responding. "Yeah, but I don't anymore. What do you want Spike?"

"Just thought we could hang is all." Spike sat down on the end of the couch by his son's feet, and reclined comfortably. "Not sure how I'm able to do this but I ain't complaining. Been walking around all day. Need ta put maps up around this place, bloke'll get lost."

"You can feel it better now huh?" Angel asked, "How close to hell you are?"

Spike shifted uncomfortably. "Yeah...but it's not like it's so big of a frigging deal is it? I mean if a ponce like you can break out."

"I didn't escape from hell-"

"And you get your good deeds all lined up in a row and you get your humanity back to you like a shining bronze ring just like everything else-"

"The prophecy is fake. They all are. Nothing is written in stone. Things we did, lives we destroyed, that's all that's going to matter." Angel said, and sat down on the other end of the couch, by David's head. Even with his parents arguing, he was still able to sleep. Darla used to joke that he was such a deep sleeper, David would sleep through his own staking...if only she had known..."So yeah. I'm going to hell. You're going to hell. David too."

"So why bother?" Spike asked. "Try and do the right thing, make a difference?"

"What else can we do?"

"So I really am going to burn?"

"Welcome to the club."

"Well, at least I got company eh? You and me together again. Hope and Crosby, Stills and Nash, Cheeko and the man-"

"Yeah, are we done?"

"Never much for small talk were you? Always trying to perfect that grooding block of wood in the sleeve. God I loved that."

"Not as much as I loved your nonstop yammering."

"The way you always had to be the big swingy swagger around, barking orders."

"You never listening."

"Always interrupting."

"And your hair? What color do they call that? Radioactive."

"Never much cared for you Liam, even when we were evil."

"Cared for you less."

"Fine."

"Good."

....

....

....

"....There was one thing about you..."

"Really?"

"Yeah, I never told anybody about this but I...I liked your poems."

"...You like Barry Manilow." 

Spike turned his head, just for a second, and Angel saw what little color the younger vampire did have drain from his face. He watched as Spike leaned forward, as if he was looking at something in the room that only he could see. Given his little ghost powers and recent disappearance, Angel wouldn't put it past that. "What is it?" He asked. 

"Don't you see it?"

"See what?"

Spike frowned, and forced himself to look away. "...Nothing...too much talk of fire and brimstone..." He turned to look back at Angel, to maybe carry on with talking about the old days for nostalgia purposes but there it was again. Standing directly behind his oblivious grandsire and David who was dead to the world. 

"What?!" Angel asked. 


	8. Hell Bound Part Two

"Right now?"

"Yes right now. Right here." Spike said, and suddenly his head snapped to the left and at nothing he hissed, "Piss off! I'm trying to have a conversation here!"

This had been happening for the past ten minutes. In this time Angel had been able to contact the others, Fred, Wesley and Marko, anyone who may have a better understanding of what was going on. He left David sleeping, for the sole purpose of not wanting to have to deal with his smart-alec remarks every two fucking seconds. It was bad enough this friend of his, this Marko, was breathing down his neck about Spike and his lack of willingness to endanger the lives of everyone else to try and help him out. The later had been the fastest to arrive, followed shortly by Fred and the ex. watcher. They all watched in a mix of confusion and disbelief as Spike walked circles around the apartment, yelling at unseen forces. 

"Who is he talking to?" Wesley asked.

Angel felt ridiculous just saying this. "Ghosts."

"Here?"

"They're everywhere! Blighters are coming out of the woodwork!" The blond circled back again, "No! I'm not talking to you! Shut up!"

Gunn, Eve, Dwayne and Paul came up together in the elevator to report on the bad news. They'd checked with security, did entire scans of the building and nothing ghostly was there except for the blond himself. Whatever Spike was seeing it couldn't have been really there. So whether this was a delusion of his as he slid further into the pits of hell, or whether he was finally succumbing to the madness that emerged when one had a soul and immortality, this couldn't have been real. And there was nothing that could be done at this point to try and improve his state. 

But Spike didn't believe that. "Check again. Check again. I'm telling you that they're here!" He looked past the others, to Marko and Fred, and shot them a look that they hadn't seen on the man before. Whatever he was seeing was starting to get to him. Something was happening now that was frightening him, and given the man had gone to bed with killers, had killed himself, had tortured and fought, had stared evil in the face, this was unnerving to say the least. What could scare someone like him? "Please," He started to say and they could only watch as Spike disappeared before their eyes. "You have to use those perfect brains of yours and...-"

"Spike?" Fred asked, "Where'd he go?"

His grandsire was more than ready to shrug this off as another pesky side effect of dealing with the incorporeal. "It's okay, he does this sometimes."

"We should still look for him." Marko pointed out, "Whatever is happening with him seems to be amplifying. We should spread out, search the building and see if we can find any trace of him." David was still fast asleep a couple feet away, unaware of the details of what was happening. As far as he knew Spike was going into hell but still he still had time. Marko had promised him that there was going to be more time. For once he agreed with Angel. That should leave David be...for now.

They left the penthouse and separated into little groups to try and relocate the missing vampire-spirit. 

* * *

 

"Have you guys been noticing that Spike has been disappearing a lot more lately?" Paul asked his brothers. They were following Angel's crew back into the offices to regroup after their failed attempts at a search party. To top it all off, it would appear that the lights were beginning to go in the building. Because what's more fun than searching for a missing ghost that's on the run from something you can't see? Doing that in the dark. Beautiful. 

Gunn overheard his assistant, and laughed darkly. "Give him a minute. Next thing you know he'll be popping up beside you in the bathroom, making cracks about your-...Am I the only one he does that too?"

"Something's different this time." Fred piped up, trying to steer the conversation as far away from Gunn and Spike in a bathroom as possible. "You've seen how he's been acting. He's agitated, hallucinating, he's-"

"Running scared," Marko finished. "Whatever is going on with Spike, whether something is truly after him or not, whether it's in his transparent little head, it's powerful enough to scare him and that's the part I'm worried about. Whatever can harm Spike stands a strong chance of harming us as well."

Wesley stopped in his tracks and the three vampires who had been following behind him bumped into him. Marko was making an excellent point. Being around Fred and all her genius employees in the science division was certainly helping him along. "Are you proposing that we may be under attack from unseen, unkillable, forces powerful enough to frighten William the Bloody? Makes sense. Perhaps it's a demon that was summoned centuries ago. There's certain ones that have been linked to feeding off energy and Spike is technically all energy at the moment-"

"You don't know what Spike's dealing with. Where he goes when he disappears. He told me and Marko." Fred interrupted him. "This isn't some demon. It's hell. He's slipping into hell."

"Well," Dwayne said slowly. "Where else would he be headed?"

* * *

The others weren't going to be much help. If they were going to try and save Spike, bring him back and make a nice and solid citizen again, it was going to be up to Marko and Fred. They left shortly after Wesley ordered Dwayne to start looking up the types of demons that would be interested in harvesting the energy of a ghost-vampire and Gunn asked Paul to look up any contracts Spike may have ever signed to try and see if he happened to sell his soul at some point in his existence. Paul then proceeded to make a crack about selling a part of himself to Gunn, and Fred decided to call it a night working with them. They went back to the lab and crunched the numbers again. Numbers, chemical compounds, anything that would make Spike whole. They had gotten to talking, about nothing in particular, as a way of trying to distract themselves from the harsh reality of what they were doing. 

"I have to admit you're adapting well to the lab," Fred said, and kept her eyes fixed on the data she was going over. In reality she was scared to look at the clock, in case more hours had passed than she had previously thought, and Spike had been lost in the process. "I mean, when Angel said you and the others were going to come work for us I had no idea what to expect but you have a very acute sense of knowledge in the lab and in relation to lab procedures."

"I should. I was going to study at the University of Pennsylvania before I turned. Got an acceptance letter a few weeks before I ran into David and Dwayne."

"University of-that's an ivy league school!"

Marko nodded but kept his gaze focused solely on the work he was reviewing. "I say I was going to go but I probably wasn't. It was a toss up between going there and drowning in student debt for a couple decades or working in the family tailoring business. In a way, I'm glad I never had to make that decision. Would have broken my mother's heart." 

This was the first time someone besides David had made any slight reference to their life and family before they had become vampires. Fred would have loved to have her assistant elaborate more on the subject when something finally started to made sense. She looked the data over again, to ensure that she wasn't just hallucinating from a lack of sleep and desperation to solve Spike's problem. It checked out. She had actually done it. She'd found a way to make Spike corporeal again. "Damn I'm good!"

"You're good!?"

Fred couldn't wait to call the others and let them know what she had discovered! She couldn't wait until Spike was able to actually interact with people again! It was going to be-

She looked down at the information she'd just looked over, knowing that it was always better to be safe than sorry. This time they all would have been sorry if some of the wording hadn't caught her eye and dragged her back in. "-Which will cause a feedback wave that destroys Los Angeles...We'll never figure this out-" Something grabbed her wrist. It was freezing to the touch, causing Fred to flinch. As quickly as it happened, the touch disappeared and the lights in the lab went completely out. 

"Spike?!" Fred called out, hoping that Spike was as strong as everyone kept saying he was, and he'd found a way to hold off whatever was coming for him for at least another hour or so. Vampire champion with a soul, they had to be tough right?

Whatever was going on here, Marko didn't like it. He never cared much for the prospect of ghosts. "Spike if it's you will you give us a-" He said, turning around and turning directly into Angel. He screamed, and jumped back. "GOD DAMN IT MAN! What are you doing?! Going to have a strap a bell around your neck or something..." And also figure out a way to get at the security cameras so he could destroy any evidence that existed of him emitting such a high pitched noise. 

Angel wasn't as disturbed. "Sorry," He said rather monotonously, and immediately got right down to business. "We had...mystical run another sweep of the building. They got nothing." 

"Screw the mystics!" Fred exclaimed, "I know what I felt. We need to try and find a way to communicate with Spike before he's really gone!" 

"What ya thinking, a physic or something?" Marko asked, "They aren't that reliable. If I were you I'd just get Dwayne and Wesley and all your other little book nerds to try and do some research on this place or something."

"Research...on the building? On the site...?"

"Yeah. Sites can have ghosts bound to them? Ain't none of your lot ever seen Poltergeist? Maybe some ancient tribe of people who used to live in this area is trying to drag Spike into hell or something." He was surprised a group of people with such serious involvement in the undead world wouldn't think to at least research the property they were on before moving in. How long did David say his father was doing this line of work again? He seemed very inexperienced, or at least, that was how he appeared to Marko, and judging from the look on the big guy's face right now, that seemed to be an accurate statement. He shifted quite awkwardly and looked back over his shoulder towards the doors to the lab,

"I'll run and tell Gunn to get his department on the property. Search for any souls or clients or employees who died on the job and may still have an attachment to this place." 

"I'll go over some of the more complex equations again," Fred piped up. "I know that there has to be something we're missing here and I just know that if I read through this all I'll find...something." 

"That's good," Angel told her, "Because as I see it we have two options now; One, find whatever is trying to pull Spike into hell and stop it before it does, and two, make Spike a...relatively normal vampire again so it can't." Unfortunately, both of those answers laid in painstaking research that would require enough caffeine to place an inexperienced soul in a coma. 

"And I'll go have a shower really quickly because I have been slaving away for hours and I smell worse than this corpse Paul once left out in the sun. Fun story there actually, we were-"

" _Marko_." Fred was able to remind him of her status and opinion on the consumption of humans with just his name. The blond stopped himself from revealing anymore gruesome details and excused himself to the decontamination showers near the back of the lab. He was too lazy to go all the way back up to his apartment that late and he and Fred were the only ones using the lab at this point. She knew better to come around the corner without calling, for fear of seeing far more skin than she would have been comfortable with, and it was only going to take a couple moments. Besides, Marko got his best ideas when he was in or around water.

* * *

 

When he and his brothers had lived in the hotel under Santa Carla, they had no running water. If the boys wanted to shower they had to go all the way to Max's house, tell him what they were doing there, and occasionally fight with another brother who had inconveniently gotten the same idea at the same time. Marko had more than once knocked a couple of Paul's teeth out trying to get the last of the hot water, David, being David, used his position as leader to steal time from his underlings and Dwayne seemed to have a six sense on the issue. He'd get there an hour before any of the others even considered showering and watch from Max's living room, curled up on the couch with a good book, as his brother squabbled and fought for control of the only bathroom. This was far nicer than that. The decontamination shower was large enough to fit ten, and tile floor felt nice beneath his bare feet. The water was automatically set at a comfortable temperature but was adjustable to whoever was using it at the time. Not to mention evenly distributed throughout. The shower head wasn't focused solely in one area and was able to keep Marko feeling nice and warm. And while he stood there under the spray, running his fingers through his wet hair and enjoying the momentary break in studying, one thought came to him. 

He could have a lot of fun in this shower. 

...You know if he found someone who he could have fun with and didn't mind the risk of getting caught.

Someone like...

It had been well over the time Marko had told Fred he would be gone and he had to be getting back. Marko turned the shower off quickly, to avoid hasting around and putting it off for another ten minutes or an hour, and hissed at the cold air that seemed to engulf him. He stepped out of the shower, grabbed a towel off a nearby rack and started to dry off. 

Something didn't feel right. 

He looked back at the shower doors, frosted over with steam, and saw what had been the cause for his suspicion. Written in the steam, the way a child would draw hearts and little doodles in the winter, was one word; REAPER. Marko frowned, wondering if this was from Spike or someone else. The glass shattered with a loud crash and left Marko scrambling back.

* * *

 

As it would turn out, there were a lot of people with ties to Wolfram and Hart that may have been attached to the place following their demise. Gunn, Paul, Angel, Wesley and Dwayne had just spent the better part of the last hour going over every single one of them. While the vampire with soul and his two human cronies occupied the chairs and couches that had been set up in each office, Paul laid splayed out over the desk on his back, reading and occasionally drifting off for a minute or two, only to be awoken by Dwayne who had taken over the desk chair beside him. 

"Okay I give up." The youngest of the new vampire declared, and dramatically tossed aside the dossier he had been skimming through. Dwayne looked up briefly, thought of saying something witty, and quickly decided against it. "Someone has to do something to try and keep me awake here while I read. Like...a blowjob or something..." While he had his sights currently directed on his hunk of hot chocolate boss, Paul wouldn't be opposed to get a little perk from the CEO too. Even if David would throw him out a window in broad daylight if he ever found out. 

Gunn, Angel and Wesley opted to ignore him.

"There's thousands of entries in these logs. A lot of them being you Angel, or another member of the Whirlwind-" Wesley pointed out.

"Wonder if my name is in there." Paul murmured to himself. Sure he was young but he would have had to have killed a decent number of people in his time. Certainly enough to be considered a dark soul.

Once again, Wesley ignored him. "There has to be a way to narrow down the search-"

"Note to self, remember to look it up later." There was no way Paul was going to be able to remember that but it didn't hurt to try. 

The door to the office creaked open and Marko stood in the doorway. His hair was damp and clinging around his neck and the collar of his shirt. Wherever he was coming from, he must have been in a rush. He wasn't even wearing his signature jacket, just a belly shirt and jeans. "Cross reference with the word Reaper." He instructed the group. "I have a hunch." 

Dwayne cocked an eyebrow, "Where the hell'd ya come up with that?"

Marko shrugged the question off with a shrug. "Shower."

"I got it. Matthias Pavayne, dark soul 182." Once they got a name it was easy to work from there. Angel found it in a matter of seconds. "Not much here though. 18th century aristocrat, nicknamed the Reaper for performing unnecessary surgery on his patients."

"What kind of surgery?"

"They kind you don't recover from." Dwayne had pulled Wesley's computer out from the desk, entered the name in the company search engine and in another matter of mere seconds, thousands of results were pouring in. "There's a file of him in internal affairs. Was classified."

Gunn's face twisted with disgust. "This guy worked for Wolfram and Hart?"

"Not exactly. Word spread of his practices and he fled his original home to California still under Spanish rule at the time. His arrival coincides with a number of ritualistic murders that occurred at the time. Pieces of the victims were placed in a highly elaborate manner suggesting the person had a high knowledge of the dark arts."

Naturally, Paul caught onto the only part that stuck out to him. " _Pieces_?"

"The murders occurred for another twenty years and the perpetrator was never caught. At least by human authorities."

The didn't seem quite right. All of his experience with this place, Angel had never known them to do something that would involve them with actually being helpful for once. "Are you saying that Wolfram and Hart...took this guy out?"

"Why would they do that?" Wesley asked. 

"Sounds like their idea of employee of the month." Gunn added. 

Dwayne scrolled down to the bottom of the document and kept reading, "Because they needed his blood. Representatives from Wolfram and Hart were looking to build a new branch in what would become Los Angeles. Unfortunately a Spanish mission was already resting on the site that seers had recommended. They needed an appropriate sacrifice to de-consecrate the grounds." And at one point, he had thought that vampires were the most unsettling things on Earth. 

"So this place is built on the blood of a mass murdering psychopath?" Paul asked, "Man, this job just got about five times more awesome!"

For the third time that night, Paul was ignored in favor of someone with something relevant to say. Gunn messaged the top of his head, feeling a headache or a migraine or something coming on. "But this doesn't make sense. If Pavayne is as bad as this says he is, he should have been roasting his chestnuts years ago."

"You said something about the dark arts right?" Angel said, turning his attention to his son's second in command. "Maybe he knew enough to stick around."

"That would explain why the mystics can't pick up on him." Marko stated. "Or it's possible to say the least."

Angel nodded in agreement. "What I don't get is the ghosts at Wolfram and Hart." 

"But there aren't any." Wesley pointed out. For the past number of hours he had been hearing nothing but ghost talk from his boss, from Fred, from Marko, it was beginning to grow on his last nerve. 

"That's what I mean. This is high-risk employment. People die here all the time. This place should be full of spooks...so what happened to them?"

Just looking back over the past year, the death toll would have definitely been in the hundreds. It would be impossibly hard to explain what could have happened to these specters without it having something to do with another supernatural involvement. "Maybe this Pavayne guy is munching on them." Gunn suggested. They had no idea if ghosts could even eat, so it wasn't as if they could rule out ghost-cannibalism as an option just yet. 

"Whatever is, we need to get Spike back. Before he's next."

* * *

As Marko had expected, Fred hadn't taken the news of Pavayne well. If she had been absorbed with her work before, she had completely thrown herself into it now. She was scribbling notes on everything, having run out of room on paper, and had attracted the attention of a particular broody vampire with a soul who was growing more and more concerned as the seconds ticked by. He watched her write, along with Marko, and the two remained quiet. They were both too busy watching their little brain girl scurry to notice and act upon how much they wanted to throttle the other. Wesley walked by, noticed the girl working away, and stopped, "That's never good."

Fred stopped, for the first time since Marko had told her about what was going after Spike. "What? Oh no. I just ran out of whiteboard. I'm just busy...not crazy." 

"Just crazy smart." Marko said with a smile. "You really think this will get Spike back?"

"Well, I pretty much had to extrapolate a new theory on inter-dimensional plasma dynamics on the fly but if the math checks out-"

All of this was just going completely over Angel's head. He'd take Fred's word for it. "Alright. We'll try and get Spike back and then we'll deal with Pavayne." Whatever got him upstairs and in bed the quickest. He was actually beginning to grow jealous of his son, lazing about upstairs, with no clue as to what was going on. Angel would fill him in in the morning once they had eaten.

The taunting of the blood he had stored in the fridge upstairs was calling to him, and Angel turned to leave to go and grab some but Fred stopped him."In order to get this to work though it's going to require a massive surge of dark energy to catalyze the process." She explained, and made sure that her wording made it clear enough that at the moment, this was a resource she lacked. 

"How massive?"

"The equivalent of nuclear evil."

...Did she expect him to just have something like that in his back pocket this late at night?! "Where the hell are we supposed to get that!?"

Wesley took that as his particular moment to shine. "Well, legend of a volcano deep in the forbidden jungles of South Africa-."

Considering that he was running on pure caffeine at this point, and that there was no way they were all going to get to South Africa this early without someone murdering another in the process, Gunn took matters into his own hands. "Or," He interrupted. "I might know a place that's a little closer to home."

* * *

 

Marko had never been to the white room before but he knew what the place was and he sincerely hoped that he would never be put in the position where he had to travel there himself to speak with the senior partners. He doubted he ever would but the fear lingered in the back of his mind. It was possible, after all, for him considering his new vocation. At Wolfram and Hart anything was possible, anything could happen to him or his brothers or Fred or anyone else at a moment's notice that would send them crawling for help to gods who wouldn't give it. He theorized the senior partners were gods, or some kind of high ranking demons that were considered gods in whatever pit of the underworld they originated in. The whole thing gave him the creeps, and left him once again longing for the care free days where he believed vampires were at the top of the food chain. He had a lot to think about, what with Gunn and Angel gone to collect a power source from whatever medium the senior partners conjured up in their room, and Fred wasn't much for talking while they were setting things up. Out of the humans in the building he had to hand it to her, she was the one person he would turn instead of just killing. Well...her and possibly Gunn but that would be more or less to shut Paul up. 

Wesley and Dwayne weren't being much fun either. The little science girl had them at her beck and call. Whenever she needed something in place, one or the other would run to her side and carry out the task with modest ease. She let Marko run final calculations at her desk while the rest of their little team scrambled to fit the pieces of her machine together. He looked up when he heard Gunn and Angel coming. There was a large cylinder tube containing a thick, murky looking black liquid in Gunn's arms that he swiftly brought over to her. Marko preferred not to think of how he would have had to persuade the partners to part with such a thing. 

Despite it's very obvious answer, Fred asked. "Did you get it?"

The newly appointed lawyer handed the tube over to her carefully and watched her place it where it needed to be. "Make it count. I was told we wouldn't be getting anymore."

Great. One shot to save the day. Because there wasn't enough pressure on them all to get this done right already. 

"It talks?" Angel asked, clearly confused about what his friend was saying. They had been in the same room as the senior partner's medium but they had been the only ones to speak, he was quite sure. "I didn't hear it talk."

"Maybe you weren't listening right."

"I think we're ready." Fred informed the others. There was only one thing left to do now...

Problem was none of them could see let alone communicate with Spike. For the first time in hours, possibly days depending on who you were asking, Paul asked a question that was actually relevant to the task at hand. "But how are we going to let Spike know?"

"We won't have to." Welsey told him. 

Fred grinned, a rather infectious one that made Marko grin himself. He really liked this girl. Whenever they were planning on leaving this place, moving back to Santa Carla or on to some new town to terror, he was going to ask David to let him take her with them. While Wolfram and Hart was a...solid solution, Marko knew that they couldn't stay here forever. Sooner or later someone in their group was going to kill David's stubborn ass father or vice versa. Either way it was going to be bloody. "This baby puts out enough juice to light up ghost city! Anything remotely dead or spectorial around here is about to get the tinglies." 

...Marko wondered if that applied to vampires, seeing as they were dead. Fred flipped the switch and a series of small, odd but not uncomfortable vibrations that rolled up and down his spine answered his question. He looked over at Paul and Dwayne standing out of the way, off to the side. Dwayne's face told Marko that he had not been expecting such a thing to occur and he wasn't pleased about it, while Paul had his eyes closed and was smiling dopely. He looked back over at Angel and was disappointed to see that if the much older vampire felt anything he wasn't reacting. Years of smiling through torture and sticking swords into his own body as twisted foreplay. But what about-

The sensor Fred had been using to detect spiritual comings and goings went off. She grabbed it off the desk, took a look at the readings, and spun around the room looking for the source of the activity. "He's here! Spike step into the circle hurry! We've only got one chance of-"

"What the hell is going on?!" 

No, Marko thought, and begged to whatever god would listen that this was some figment of his imagination speaking to him brought on by the stress of bringing Spike back. They were so close to getting this done without telling him all of the grim details! One more minute and they would have been in the clear! He gulped, and looked back over his shoulder. David stood in the entryway, arms folded firmly in front of his chest, and sleep in his eyes. He wasn't wearing his normal jacket and jeans. Instead he stood barefoot on the tile floor clad in a black undershirt and boxers. He was shaking too. Not violently like a Chiwawa would but he was unable to remain completely still. It would appear that despite his age and the time spent in the company of the Whirlwind, David was unfamiliar with how to remain stoic when feeling a strange sensation or being tortured. 

When no one answered his question, David darted forward. He stopped directly in front of his father, flames swirling in his eyes and venom fused deep into his voice. David had always enjoyed his sleep, even if as a vampire it was never actually a necessity. Whenever he was awaken so rudely the man could move faster than any creature Marko had ever encountered, and felt not a drop of fear in his entire body. The boys had always joked that the only way David would ever go up against a slayer and stand a firm chance of killing the bitch would be if she woke him from a nap. Angel averted his gaze away from his son and to the wall, and so David repeated his question. 

"What the hell is going o-AHK!" 

David's hands flew to his throat and he started to cough and sputter. 

Choking wasn't a threat to David. That didn't make it any less painful or serious. This type of hold on him left him defenseless and should his attacker be able to grab a hold of a stake, or holy water, or force him out into daylight, it was a death sentence. That didn't mean the first born son of Angelus was going to let him get away with it so easily. He thrashed against whatever had him by the neck, growled, and his eyes flashed gold. He let his fangs slide out, hoping that the sudden demonic shift would at least stun whatever had gotten the vampire at the moment. He had no idea. 

"David!" Marko screamed, but had no idea what to do. How could you fight something you couldn't see?

Angel, Gunn and Dwayne ran towards him but were knocked backwards to the floor by a wave of energy. They were tossed around the lab like ragdolls, knocking over supplies and books. Marko bit down hard on his lower lip, and felt the metallic taste of his own blood fill his mouth. He felt helpless and useless, but he couldn't think of a single thing to do! David was always the one who came up with their plans in Santa Carla! He...he wished they were back home...David would have known what to do then, or Max. They always knew what to do back then. 

Whatever had David dropped him to the floor, and the circle pad that Fred had created to turn Spike corporeal again lit up in a bright gush of light. Marko took a couple steps back, and shielded his eyes with his arm. When the light vanished and he was able to look again, there was a man on his hands and knees in the circle, and David was lying a couple inches away, his hands still touching his throat. There were two dark purple, hand shaped bruises on his neck from where he had been grabbed. Marko lost all interest he had in the man and rushed to his sire's side. "David!?"

The blond vampire coughed, and forced himself to sit up. He took one hand from his neck, and used it to grab onto the counter's edge to pull himself up farther to his feet. By now he had stopped shaking, but his voice was far more raspier than it usually was. With a wave of the hand that was no longer in use, he waved his brother off. "I'm alright. I'm okay..."

"No!" The man in the circle hissed, his voice heavy and words slurring together. He was dirty, dressed in rags that would have once been fine clothing, with wild hair and eyes. He cursed and banged his fists into the floor. " _I'll cut you into nothing! I'll feast on your brains! I'll swim in lakes of your own blood_!" 

Angel punched the man Marko felt safe to identify as Pavayne before he could continue with his little tyraid, sending the now human man flying into the far wall. "You'll shut the hell up!"

"Don't kill him!" Spike ran in from nothing, exhaustion seeping through his words. Whatever hell Pavayne had been putting him through, it had taken a toll. "If he becomes a spirit again we'll never stop him!"

"Alright, no killing. Just a whole lot of bruising!" Angel hit him again. 

* * *

 

"You know what the worst part is about all this? The clean up."

Marko had been feeling sorry for his boss after their failure to recorporealize. She was tired, dead on her feet, a zombie really, making it through the reminder of the night with nothing but help from the wonder that was coffee, and she still had so much work to do. With the machine she had designed, constructed and used in one night no longer useful, it had to be dismantled and set aside to use for scrap, the lab had to be cleaned up and prepared for the next morning, and she had to write a detailed report to accounting about how she had blown through thousands in mere hours. She told him to go home, to get some rest so someone would be awake to operate the lab tomorrow, but the young vampire knew he couldn't just leave her here like this. This was what assistants were supposed to do after all, assist their bosses. While she worked away unscrewing parts and setting them in their designated boxes for later use, Marko swept and straightened up the rest of the space, trying to keep things light at the same time. Now wasn't a time for fun, it would seem. He leaned the broom he had been using against one of the lab tables, and hopped up on the counter to set for a minute. "You sure you're alright? You haven't been responding to any of my jokes."

She didn't even look at him. "Yeah...it's just. You know."

"I know. I wanted to help him too."

Finally, Fred looked back at her new underling and she offered him a small smile, a fruit of his efforts. "How's David doing?" She asked, switching the subject.

Marko took a deep, long, unneeded breath. "Well he's David so, uh, pissed off at Angel for not telling him, at me for not being as detailed as I should have been, at me for not telling him what we were trying to do today, but overall just really tired. Dwayne took a quick look at the bruises on his neck and he went back up to the penthouse to sleep." It wasn't life threatening so David lost all concern. Marko wasn't as easily deterred. Pavayne was a sick and twisted soul, and he could have known how to kill a vampire simply by trauma to the neck. The lost boys had almost died a lot in the past couple of weeks and Marko preferred for it not to happen again. "In the morning he'll be a lot better with Spike being able to run around without any possibility of falling into hell."

"You sure do care a lot about him, don't you?"

"About Spike? I guess. I mean the guy seems nice enough but-"

"No Marko. I meant about David."

"Hmm? I have no idea what you're talking about."

Fred was a genius. Genius enough to know when she saw something going on. "Well, you certainly talk about him a lot. Not to mention you're ready to fight anyone, including Angel, to defend him. I guess what I mean is, you really look after him."

David was a lot of things but he wasn't great at looking out for himself. It was why he had a tendency to stick to family groups of vampires, from Whirlwind to the Lost Boys, and just because he could lead didn't mean he could keep himself out of harm's way. For a while, Marko supposed you could say that he had been sticking his neck out for his reckless sire, and even though he was still a total douchebag in the pygmy vampire's opinion, it was impossible not to notice the pure hatred and contempt in Angel's eyes when Pavayne had gotten a hold of his son. In his own way, there was someone else looking out for the guy now. "Someone has to." Marko replied simply. "The man's too reckless sometimes. He needs someone to keep him from getting his head cut off and put on a stake."

"Don't say such things around me." 

Without a ghost serial killer pushing him around, Spike was able to move more freely throughout the building. He came out of the wall, and stood there, watching the two little science nerds work at cleaning up their mess. He cast a quick glance at the machine that could have saved him, half-dismantled and a waste of space. "Don't suppose you made a spare?"

Fred spoke for the both of them. "We're sorry..." The pieces they had used were already near non-existent and there was no way they were going to be able to find another power source to run the damn thing. 

"Don't be luvs. Made my choice. Wouldn't change it for the world." In all his years of living, Spike had never encountered a being that disgusted him as much as Pavayne. He had to get the man's grubby little hands off his son, and he had been willing to do it by any means necessary. Remaining a ghost was an unfortunate price, but one he had been more than willing to pay. 

"There are other things we could try. A little riskier but-"

"No. Don't want to end up like Pavayne. Putting off hell, hurting people."

"Well," Fred said and her little smile returned. "That just proves what me and Marko have been telling everybody."

"That I'm a handsome devil that brightens the place up?"

"That you're worth saving."

Spike smiled at them both, and they smiled right back. It was funny how a couple soft spoken words could turn something so awful around so quickly. It all depended on who was saying it. As cheesy as all of it sounded, Marko knew he had to just look at the bright side. David was okay, Pavayne was gone and Spike was going to be staying around for a long time. "You know, it could be worse. I got lots of room, good company. Even picked up a few new tricks." 

There was a book that had been knocked onto the floor in all the commotion laying against the lab table. Spike knelt down, picked it up slowly and set it back up on the stack where it was supposed to be. That was the one great thing about Pavayne coming after him. He had been able to teach Spike that if he wanted it badly enough, he would get it. "I guess there's worse things than being a ghost." 

Marko grinned at the elder vampire, "So what are you going to do first with your new little tricks?"

"Well, there has been something I've been wanting to do for a bit. I'll speak with the two of you in a little while."

* * *

Angel would be gone for another couple minutes delivering Pavayne to his new prison. A world constantly changing, expanding around him, and he would be stuck in a tiny cell, unable to move, unable to speak, unable to even listen for the rest of eternity. It was about time that son of a bitch was getting what he deserved, but it only allowed Spike a minuscule time frame to do what he'd come here to do and slip out without being noticed. David was asleep on the couch again, a blanket loosely wrapped around his waist, his arm hanging off the side and using the arm rest as a pillow. He slept just like he did when he was still a child. Without making a sound, Spike went over to the couch his son had claimed as a bed and adjusted the blanket he had around himself so it covered his shoulders. He hesitated to do the next part, unsure if it would work the same with people as it did with objects, but nothing would happen if it didn't work. Nothing would change in the slightest. Spike leaned over, and kissed David's forehead. It was the first physical contact he'd had with his child in over a hundred years, and it was something he had been wanting to do since David had left.

No one would know. 

The vampire ghost stood back up and returned down to the office to find something to do while he waited for the rest of Angel's lot to return to work in the morning. What he didn't know was that his grandsire had returned from delivering Pavayne to deep storage before he had even arrived in the penthouse. Angel watched his former companion tuck their son in and leave with a deep feeling of regret. This reminded him too much of a time he would have liked to forget, and a life he could have had centuries ago. 

 


End file.
